FLORIDA: It was a case of man versus shark, and Man came out tops.

American Gary Hall, who has won five Olympic gold medals for swimming events, punched and kicked the shark in the nose but failed to drive it off. Finally, he swam underneath it and his sister shot it in the mouth with a spear gun.

32-year-old Gary Hall and his 28-year-old sister Bebe were fishing about 200m away from their boat when they spotted a shark. They began to swim back to the boat but were attacked by another shark. The 1.8m black tip reef shark bit Bebe in the arm.

Hall turned to fight the shark. "I kept punching it in the nose and kicking it and it kept coming after me. I was eventually able to get underneath it and roll it off of me. That's when it charged toward my sister. The shark charged her with its mouth open and she shot it."

"The shark swam off. Otherwise with her bleeding as much as she was it could have been disastrous."

Hall was not injured, but Bebe needed 19 stitches for the bite wound on her arm.

Hall is not sure how quickly he had swum 50 meters, but he has certainly never swum so fast in his life before.

Hall won the gold medal in the 2004 Olympics 50-metre freestyle event in Athens.