By Terin Frodyma on SwimSwam
A triathlon coach in North Augusta took several athletes out for a swim on Sunday, though the swim, which was supposed to be race practice, nearly took a turn for the worse when he was forced to fend off a nearly four-and-a-half-foot alligator.
Jonathan Bruney, a 31-year-old triathlon coach, was preparing a number of his athletes for an upcoming Ironman race in September, where he said his goal was to get to “Augusta and really just go through the entire simulation,” Bruney said in a report from Fox 10 News.
Bruney knew there was a chance of alligators in the water, though he would never put his athletes in “any sort of danger.”
“We had walked up on the bridge, looked in the water,” Bruney said in the report from Fox 10. “I knew there could be a chance of maybe a few alligators here or there, but I would never put my athletes into any sort of danger. And the chances of that are extremely rare.”
Roughly 1,000 yards into the swim, and about 60 yards offshore, one of his athletes saw an alligator along the bank and veered away from it. Just a few seconds after, Bruney felt a “violent blow”; that blow, which initially he thought was a long, ended up being a four-foot-five-inch alligator at his elbow.
“Basically, out of nowhere, it hit me, it was a pretty big impact to my right side … it felt as if my elbow had made a hard impact, maybe like diving on a gym basketball court.” Bruney said. “I immediately thought, ‘I need to get this off of me’ because I didn’t want him to spin or death roll and do even more damage.”
Bruney added that he grabbed its head and jabbed the alligator in the eye, which got it off of him.
“I just knew the eyes were what you should target, I put my hand on the snout, reached up and pushed my thumb into his eyeball. And he released.”
One of Bruney’s athletes, Matthew Davis, noticed the commotion in the water and the bleeding from Bruney’s arm, so he jumped into action, and his training as a wilderness first responder helped stop the bleeding.
“I could see some commotion in the water in front of me but didn’t think nothing of it. I sighted again, and I could see they were climbing up onto a dock. That was not normal. I got to the dock, climbed up on it, and he just said, ‘Jonathan’s been bit. ‘ Davis told Fox 10. I told him, ‘It’s gonna hurt. ‘ I squeezed as hard as I could, and I could watch the bleeding stop as we applied the tourniquet.”
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Bruney said it could have been much worse, adding that he will continue racing and coaching after his accident.
“It could have been a lot worse, I guess I won the alligator lottery.” Bruney said. “I’ll still be racing. I’ll still be coaching and pursuing the passion, I told my athletes, ‘I am a coach that will fight off and take a gator bite to protect you and make sure you’re having a successful swim.'”
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