After a rough sixth day on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, pro surfer Alana Blanchard finally has her time in the mirror room with DS Billy Billingham and Rudy Reyes. There, she emotionally looks back on the time she witnessed her friend, fellow pro surfer Bethany Hamilton, get attacked by a shark when they were young teenagers.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to do this is because when I was 12, my friend got bit by a shark,” Blanchard explains. “She was laying on her board, a wave went down, and when it came up, her arm was gone, blood’s everywhere. It was definitely shredded and she was gushing blood the whole time.”
Beginning to cry, Blanchard adds, “It was just a really traumatic experience for me.”
Hamilton, whose story was documented in the 2011 feature film Soul Surfer, was surfing with Blanchard and her father on Halloween 2003 when a 14-foot tiger shark bit off her arm.
Blanchard says they “didn’t see the shark” or even “think about it” — they “just wanted to save [Hamilton’s] life.”
“When something happens like that, it doesn’t seem real. In the moment, I definitely didn’t react good. I was freaking out,” she recalls to the directing staff. “Me and my dad got her on the beach and I just started throwing up because I think I [was] just in shock.”
Noting that her dad saved Hamilton’s life, Blanchard — now a mom of two — says she wants to learn how to react in those kinds of situations.
“My dad said, like, from that day I was a changed girl. Like, I never was the same. I’m sure there’s some PTSD in there, for sure,” she tells the cameras in her confessional. “Now that I have kids, I want to learn how to overcome those things.”
Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Fox.
