Craig Slater says viral Miami GP swim triggered crisis talks and phone calls

Sky Sports F1 reporter Craig Slater has revealed the repercussions of his viral ‘swim’ in the Miami Grand Prix marina. During a piece on the inaugural Miami race and its now-famous fake water, the journalist pretended to backstroke his way across the fake marina in front of the camera. Speaking in a Reddit AMA, Slater admitted the trouble he got into despite it being spur-of-the-moment fun rather than a dig at the event.

“I got in a lot of trouble for that, I have to say,” he wrote on the Formula 1 Reddit page. “I hadn’t intended to jump into the water. I knew it was a thing because there had been people that planted images of themselves on images of the fake marina, but the actual swimming bit, I jumped in and the camera panned off.

“In that moment I thought, I wonder if I could do a bit of a backstroke on the fake plastic lagoon. And actually, it worked quite well. I got a bit of traction as I was moving myself.”

The clip of Slater quickly spread across social media alongside a number of other memes based on the marina, but the management of the event was not overly happy with this being broadcast in front of however many people.

“But there were apparently crisis meetings called with the Miami Dolphins management about it. They weren’t pretty happy. Although they took it in good part when I subsequently saw them, and there were a lot of phone calls. I felt really sorry for the people who were marketing the event because they thought I was poking fun at it.”

Marina atmopshere

Photo by: Jon Noble

The 2022 Miami Grand Prix marina at the Hard Rock Stadium was complete with 10 yachts and 25,000 square feet of vinyl made to look like water. It was the talk of F1 that weekend, and it worked, with the race boasting an average live audience of 2.6 million people.

The marina, found on the inside of Turns 6, 7 and 8, has returned in the following seasons.

“It really is a world-class event. They do such a good job there,” Slater continued. “But it was meant to be a bit of innocent fun, and it was totally spur of the moment. So yeah, it genuinely wasn’t a hatchet job against the people running the Miami event, which is maybe the most polished event on the calendar now. If you get the chance to go, go to that.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team