Who’s faster, an Olympic swimmer, or a great white shark? That’s like asking who’s a better flier, a bird that’s born to fly or the Orville brothers. There was one singular point to this entire escapade that pitted Michael Phelps, Olympian gold medalist, against one of the deadliest creatures currently swimming the seas. They wanted to see who would win. That’s it, nothing else, no real question of the century here. It was sheer curiosity that drove this supremely disappointing show to its zenith and then left everyone hanging in utter disappointment. The fact that so many people thought this show was going to be anything close to satisfying is a poor joke on the part of the people that thought this up, and a very bad mark on Phelps for daring to hype it up the way he did.
So why aren’t we sympathetic to the viewers that felt cheated? Hmm, let me count the ways.
Did you really expect to see a human being racing side by side with an ACTUAL shark?
In the history of bad ideas that one is as close to neglectful homicide as it can get. Let’s see here, they strapped Phelps into a bodysuit and a monofin to make him faster. In reality what they would have done is make him look more like a tempting snack for a great white. Do people understand what great white sharks eat? Do they get the point that sharks don’t often distinguish between what looks like food and what really IS food? Putting Phelps in with a real shark, especially in that getup, would have been like ringing the dinner bell. Plus, why would anyone think that a human could possibly match a fully grown shark? Great whites top out at around 25 mph, whereas even the most fit human could only ever achieve up to 6 mph. And I seriously doubt a human would last even half that distance at full speed, whereas the shark would be swimming laps around the hapless human. Or would that mean something else?
I get the fact that people are mad about the hype being so bogus, but there was no chance at realism here.
Sharpen your knives and pitchforks folks and get your torches ready because I’m about to lay a nugget of truth on you. VIEWERS THAT BOUGHT THE HYPE ARE MORONS. Yep, I said it, and I’ll tell you why. If you believe a human, born on land and designed to function on land, could ever best an animal that spends its entire life in the water, then you’re obviously the type that believes the earth is flat and that God is really a space alien waiting to come and take us all away. Wake up people, if you want realism then take a look at what really can happen when you go swimming with sharks. They might not be as aggressive as people think, but with something that looks like lunch in the water there’s no way to predict what they’ll do. Phelps should have known better than to promote this stinker in the way he did, especially knowing that there was no way he’d be in any imminent danger.
So it was about idle curiosity, nothing more. An entire program about how man could possibly swim as fast as a shark. And this is the state of educational entertainment today. Oy.
