Chantelle Doyle lies diagonally across her hospital bed with her heavily bandaged right leg propped up on a chair at a 30-degree angle. She is trying to help her nerves heal. It might not work. Great white sharks can bite hard. Twelve days ago, the 35-year-old was surfing with her partner, Mark Rapley, when a 2.5m juvenile great white took her leg in its mouth and severed the nerves below her right knee, taking a chunk out of her calf. What Rapley did in the seconds that followed in the surf off Shelly Beach near the New South Wales city of Port Macquarie has made news bulletins across the country and parts of the globe. Seeing his partner in trouble, he paddled frantically to her, jumped on to her back and rained punches down on to the animal’s head and near its eye until it let go and slipped away. Doyle has not spoken publicly until now about that day; about how in those first moments the shark readjusted its grip on her three times; how she feared Rapley’s punches might not be enough; and how she poked fun at her helpers as they dropped her on the way to… Read full this story
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