It was the ultimate bait-and-switch — with Olympic legend Michael Phelps being chum and viewers taking the shark bait.
The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week special “Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White” Sunday night was a toothless dud for many. Phelps swam solo.
R. Eric Thomas in Elle wrote: “We were promised a battle for the Earth. We were given footage from an underwater reboot of Avatar. Phelps raced live against a CGI shark moving at a speed based on a live shark’s movements at another time and place.”
The Washington Post added, “While common sense probably could have saved any disappointment — along with preshow interviews where Phelps assured everyone that he wouldn’t really race next to a shark in open water — many viewers were not pleased.”
It was 57 minutes into into the hour show (executive produced by Phelps) that scientist Tristan Gutteridge said: “Clearly, we can’t put Michael in one lane and a white shark on the far lane. We’re gonna have to do a simulation.”
Turns out that sharks rarely swim in a straight line anyway, and while the show did prove scientifically interesting for its way of measuring shark cruising and top-end speed, it didn’t match the hype.
(Breaking all kinds of swimming rules, including staying underwater most of the time and not using his arms, Phelps swam 100 meters in 38.1 seconds, with the help of a sharklike fin on his feet. He finished 2 seconds behind the computer-generated shark in a time that crushed the long-course freestyle world record of 46.91 by Brazil’s César Cielo.)
Thomas and others had a field day for their comic riffs, however.
“And who is this anonymous fake shark, anyway?” he wrote. “Michael Phelps’ agents should only be racing him against name sharks. Was Left Shark unavailable? Was Jaws busy?”
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