FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

Watch Michael Phelps Lose a Race Against a Fake Shark

We all knew that their race wasn't going to happen simultaneously, but really? A simulation?

Everyone was very excited about watching the 23-time Olympic champion Michael Phelps racing a shark. Sure, we know exactly how fast Michael Phelps is and exactly how fast a great white shark is, but we just wanted to see it go down. More important, we wanted to find out how it was going to go down. Because… how do you even arrange that?

Well, people who tuned into the ridiculously hyped swimmer vs. shark battle had to shift both bits of their expectations—one that Phelps would be swimming as he does in the Olympics, because he strapped himself to a fin:

Advertisement

(What the hell, cheater?)

And two: that there would be an actual shark involved. Because there wasn't a real shark. Not even at a different time, recorded for speed in a contained course. No, they hired a computer graphics team to impose the fake sharks in on the situation.

Earlier in the show, Phelps was pitted up against a fake reef shark and a fake hammerhead shark in a 50 meter race. Phelps clocked in between the reef shark (18.9s) and the champion hammerhead (15.1s) at 18.7s. Again, they weren't real sharks.

But then came the main event—the 100m against the great white. This was the top-billed part. Maybe they went the full nine yards and got a real shark for this one? Just wrangled a shark with some chum, kept it in one place, and let it go at another batch of chum, maybe? Record the time, and voila? Nope. It was a fake Great White shark too:

Many people tuned into the whole hour-long event just to see a hypothetical that an intrepid YouTuber could have stitched together in five minutes. I mean, these people also decided to make it a close race by creating a fake seal for the fake shark to breech on? What is this absolute nonsense?

According to a completely arbitrary designation of a fake great white shark's swimming time, the shark beat Phelps with a 36.1 second time to Phelps' 38.13 seconds. Again, in a fake race against a fake shark.

You know, sometimes video content's not all it's cracked up to be.