What could have been a hinge in his life, a before and after, a traumatic episode of those that leave an indelible sequel, for Alejandro Travaglini were only "45 seconds of terror, perhaps the most painful, but after the fact there was a chain of fortuitous events that made that nothing more than an anecdote of the fucking mother".
It doesn't lower the price of what he had to face. "But the trauma subsided after a saving wave that landed me on the shore. That was the beginning of a series of synchronized events that made the emotional record positive."
Recovered, without physical or psychological sequelae, Alejandro Travaglini says that "mine is an anecdote of the fucking mother".
"Then, on the shore, bloody, I had the lucidity to indicate how they had to make a tourniquet in the deep wound. And lying in the sand, without losing consciousness, it occurred to me to think of the emergency service in which they send you a helicopter that will take me to the city of Perth. Is that understood? What happened to me was unforgettable, but it didn't change my life."
"That", sums up almost with disdain Travaglini (42), a Buenos Aires native of Beccar, who has lived for 15 years in Margaret River, a coastal paradise in Australia, where he can develop his passion: surfing. "That" happened on April 15, 2018, around 8.30am, when surfing in the waters of Cobblestone, he came face to face with a four-metre white shark. "They say it was three bites, for me it was one and furious, but I'm not sure."
100 stitches and a wound of 30 centimeters. His wife and children, after the surgery that saved his leg.
Twelve o'clock at night in Argentina and eleven hours later in Australia. As he finishes his scrambled egg brunch, Alejandro relives the story that everyone has asked him about and he seems to have forgotten. "It's not a position, nor is it an attitude of arrogance, but it's been five years."
In a gallery of his house, while having breakfast and talking with Clarín, he puts his legs on a table and shows the wounds of a triumphal battle. " There are three main cuts... This one in the left calf -it looks sunken, impresses-, this other cut in the left quadriceps -about 30 centimeters- and one closer to the right knee, more concealable".
"You have to separate the many. At the time, I thought the worst. First, in dying, then when I knew I would live, I was convinced that I would lose my legs and, as I said before, the recovery was in a timely manner. It took me a few months to return to the water, but with patience and a confidencethat I was resuming, I naturalized it. From the beginning, being hospitalized, I knew I was going to give everything to surf again. I wasn't going to shrink, despite having had the scare of my life."
"Fuck off cunt"
A cut of 30 centimeters, 100 stitches. And just one week hospitalized for size panorama. "The scene every so often appears but it doesn't disturb me. Many things were said, but I didn't stumble on to the shark... I was surfing and at one point I was able to put the keel of the surfboard in his throat, which hurt him and I think that confused him."
He reviews the most chilling scene of his life from the reconstruction he made with the photos that an Australian photographer could take him: "First I was with the shark face to face, but I was looking at it from above, a meter away ... Then I found myself clutching the board as if it were a shield with which I try to protect myself. I felt a bite, a tear, and he let go, and finally I put the board in his mouth."
Travaglini, at a press conference and on crutches, after being discharged: "I went from being terrified in front of the shark, to being angry and screaming. I think that's what Alejandro finished."
The shark circled around Travaglini. "I saw him confused, like not understanding what the fuck he had bitten, he was like frustrated. I went from terror of the situation, to being furious. I made eye contact with the shark and at that moment, crazy as I was, I felt that I was leveling, that I was on equal footing."
Without sending the part and today, five years later, he believes that the shark gave up. "This dam is not for me, he must have thought," he swipes, smiling. And I get the feeling that he realized he had the fight lost."
Very shocked to be hurt, he insulted him from top to bottom... In English. "Fuck off cunt(la recon... from your mother). At that moment, a friend shouted 'Drop the board' and I don't know why I did it, and just a perfect wave helped me get away from the shark and swim desperately to the shore... I felt like my leg was hanging down."
Jumping psychological fences
Travaglini acknowledges that he did not return to the place where he was attacked by the white shark until a few days ago, "when I set out to tear down those psychological fencesthat had been making noise in my head. When I spoke with you a few weeks ago to coordinate this video call, I kept thinking about the obstacles I had not been able to overcome and this was the main one: surfing again in Cobblestone. "
"I wanted to talk to you and tell you that I could do it again. It was a fantastic experience, I surfed a beautiful wave, I was alone and I was able to move forward, battle my fears, deal with that trauma. At one point I found myself alone, in the middle of the immensity and despite seeing shadows of some bugs I did not wrinkle. They were dolphins that usually accompany you and I already distinguish them because they have a very different way of swimming, more elastic than sharks, which are more rigid."
He admits that he had moments of nervousness, of images from the past that reappeared. "I kept my concentration and when the potatoes burned in the bocho, I resorted to breathing techniques that calmed me. It is difficult to explain a personal feeling and more if it is an activity that few practice, but it was the glory for me, I again had the ability to surf alone in a place that until nothing had blocked it. "
Passionate researcher
It is an area of one and a half kilometers where 90 percent of the shark attacks that occurred in the last ten years occurred. "I did not dare to go even though it is a perfect place to surf, but there are usually very few people and there is a popular saying that sharks go to the coasts where there are less than 11 people and always return to the places where they found food, although with me it was the exception, "he smiles.
This is how Alejandro Travaglini arrived at the hospital in Perth. (Seven News) Australia Alejandro Travaglini shark attacked an Argentine survived a shark attack fighting with the young animal attacked admitted to hospital
A specialist in hydrology, Travaglini works in an iron ore mine where he is responsible for extracting groundwater from the groundwater in northern Australia. He has a low profile and gave very few interviews with the media because"I am not interested in profiting from this story that is mine. They offered me to go to TV shows, make a movie, reports, but no... The only thing I accepted was a documentary for National Geographic called 'Shark versus surfer'. Nothing else."
Married to Tanya, Australian, and father of two children, Travaglini confesses that although there was no drastic change in his life, he did become "an investigator" who wanted to know why what happened to him happened. "I could not stay calm, I needed to find out and I dedicated myself to studying the behavior of sharks, I talked to scientists and specialists. That's how I discovered, among other things, that if there are more than 11 people on the coast, they move away."
"After the attack I suffered, I went crazy wanting to know the reasons, I talked to scientists, specialists and I have my theory," says Travaglini.
The Argentinian shows passion and shares it in this talk. "I found out that in the area where the most attacks are recorded, it has the particularity of being an underground marine topography, where there may be colonies of seals and sharks allow them to be on the lookout and not be seen."
"I also investigated that, in those days, before what I suffered, I had discovered that many whales ran aground on the Australian coasts and are an unmissable feast for sharks. In that April of 2018, the white shark that bit me was hunting for an injured whale that was in the area but for some reason the shark could not arrive."
"Frustrated, furious," he continues, "helpless or confused, I think the shark thought I might be that whale he was chasing and bleeding. But why were there so many whales that ran aground at almost the same time? Because they suffered from the technology of ships that did underground mapping, whose devices damaged the hearing sensitivity of whales that, bewildered, ended up stuck near the coast."
His conclusion makes him proud and adds one more fact. "Do you know why the ships did those underground mappings? Because they were looking for the Malaysia Airlines plane that had disappeared a few years ago (on March 8, 2014 it left Kualu Lumpur for Beijing and its whereabouts were never known again). I studied, I researched, I don't send fruit, I believe in all this I say and it closes me on all sides."
ACE
See also
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