Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White- how they pulled this off
Premiers on July 23rd on Discovery’s Shark Week!
This may be the most talked about race for Phelps, more so than any other race he’s ever swam…
In case you’re wondering, will he survive a race against a great white- Yes! As the opening episode for shark week was taped last month…
Phelps explained just how these races were done. “We were off the tip of Cape Town in South Africa and set up, almost, a lane where I was able to swim in a straight line. We were in open water, but we did not have a shark literally next to me swimming,” he says. When it was time for the sharks to take on one of the world’s fastest swimmers it was calibrated a bit differently. “The challenge of trying to get a white to swim in a straight line was difficult, because when a white attacks a seal on the surface they come from under the surface to build speed to be able to get that natural breach that we all see from great whites. But I think with some of the tests that we were running out there on the boat, we were able to see what they can do. It’s a speed burst that they reach up to 25 mph, so in a 100-meter race, they might be swimming at 16 mph…That’s what we were able to do, and it was crazy — just watching them naturally breach and then watching them come down with the amount of force that they have when they are going to see what something is.”
Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White Premiers on July 23rd on Discovery’s Shark Week! Phelps will also be doing a special on July 30th for Shark Week Shark School with Michael Phelps.
