Triathlon Coach Mauled by Alligator Fights Beast Off with ‘Bare Hands’

A routine training swim turned into a terrifying fight for survival when a triathlon coach was attacked by an alligator in a Georgia river.

Jonathan Bruney, 31, was swimming with a group of athletes in the Savannah River in Augusta on Sunday when something suddenly slammed into his right arm.

At first, Bruney thought he had hit a log.

Then came the pain.

Bruney looked over and realized a 4- to 5-foot alligator had clamped its jaws around his arm.

“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 told WRDW.

Knowing he had only seconds to react, the triathlon coach grabbed the reptile by the head, planted a hand on its snout and jammed his thumb into its eye.

The desperate move worked.

“I just knew the eyes were what you should target,” Bruney said. “I put my hand on the snout, reached up and pushed my thumb into his eyeball. And he released.”

Bruney and the other athletes had entered the river near SRP Park baseball stadium as part of a practice session ahead of an Ironman race scheduled for September.

The group was roughly 1,000 yards into its swim and about 60 yards from shore when another athlete reportedly spotted an alligator near the riverbank.

Seconds later, Bruney — who was leading the swimmers — was attacked.

“It was a pretty big impact to my right side,” he recalled. “It felt as if my elbow had made a hard impact, maybe like diving on a gym basketball court.”

Fellow triathlete Matthew Davis was swimming behind Bruney when chaos erupted.

Davis said he saw Bruney being pulled onto a dock while another swimmer screamed for everyone else to get out of the water.

Bruney was bleeding heavily and beginning to go into shock.

Fortunately, Davis is a wilderness first responder.

With no traditional tourniquet available, he tore the cord from his swim buoy and wrapped it tightly around Bruney’s injured arm.

“I told him, ‘It’s gonna hurt,’” Davis recalled. “I squeezed as hard as I could, and I could watch the bleeding stop as we applied the tourniquet.”

There was another problem: The swimmers did not have their phones.

The group began banging on doors along the riverfront trying to find someone who could call for help.

Eventually, they spotted a man walking his dog who contacted 911.

Bruney was rushed for medical treatment, where doctors stitched the deep wound.

Despite the horrifying attack, Bruney apparently caught an extraordinary break. The alligator’s teeth tore through skin and fatty tissue but missed his muscle.

“Once again, it could have been a lot worse,” Bruney said. “I guess I won the alligator lottery.”

Doctors have reportedly ordered Bruney to stay out of the water for three to four weeks.

But even being mauled by an alligator apparently isn’t enough to keep the determined athlete away from racing.

Bruney still plans to compete in Ironman Augusta next month.