'Shark girl' unfazed by media frenzy

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WORLD COVERAGE: Lydia Ward, 14, who was bitten by a shark at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill, on Monday evening has been receiving worldwide media coverage.

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A 14-year-old Invercargill girl has travelled around the world in 24 hours without even leaving the city.

Lydia Ward has been engulfed by worldwide media attention since she appeared in The Southland Times on Tuesday morning for hitting a shark on the head after it latched on to her while out on her boogie board.

But to Lydia the episode was "no big deal". She was unaware she had been bitten when she gave the shark a whack on the head with her board to make it go away. The incident was described by some international media as a "bashing", she said.

Her story is the second most popular story overseas on the BBC website, fourth on Yahoo and she has been approached by BBC, America's CBS, Australia's Foxtel Network, Channel 7 and Channel 9 for television interviews.

Dubbed "shark girl" by several news agencies, headlines such as "Teenage girl saves herself by bashing shark" can be found on the internet. "... and I thought it was big that I was getting in The Southland Times ," she said.

Yesterday, she said the worst aspect of all the media attention was that she had to get up at 6.30am for an interview.

Despite becoming a media darling overnight, she said she was "unfazed" by how quickly her story had been picked up. At school yesterday, Lydia's friends were concerned about how badly hurt she was, but after explaining that it was no big deal and the story had been blown out of proportion, things calmed down, she said.

She was hoping the hype would fade away soon and "people would just forget about me".

- © Fairfax NZ News

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