Michael Phelps lost to a great white shark, well at least a computer generated great white, and social media was not happy about it, pointed out The Washington Post on Monday.
In the buildup for its annual "Shark Week," the Discovery Channel promoted "Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White," and appeared to promise a race between the all-time Olympic gold medal swimming champion and a shark, but viewers got no such thing in the end.
What Discovery researchers did was use the speed data they obtained to create a computer-generated image of a shark racing against Phelps.
"Clearly, we can't put Michael in one lane and a white shark on the far lane," said ecologist Tristan Gutteridge said on the show, warning fans not to get their hopes up about Phelps being in the same pool as a shark, per the Post. "We're gonna have to do a simulation."
According to Discovery, the shark beat Phelps, who wore a special finned wetsuit, over 100 meters 36.1 seconds to 38.1 seconds. That left many feeling that they were duped.
"Still, 'Shark Week' fans who were lured by Discovery's purposefully ambiguous promotion of the show felt gutted when it became clear that Phelps wouldn't be swimming alongside the real deal. They vented their frustrations on Twitter on Sunday," said Dominque Mosbergen of the Huffington Post.
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