The OceanGate Titan submersible disaster last month that killed five people, including CEO and founder Stockton Rush, has been a hot topic across the news world. But what’s been particularly interesting is when actual submersible experts have weighed in. And HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel has a good connection to one of those, having profiled undersea explorer Victor Vescovo in 2020 after he built his own submersible in 2018. In the wake of the Titan incident, Gumbel caught up with Vescovo for a segment that will premiere on this month’s edition of Real Sports (which debuts on HBO Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and is also available to stream on Max). A preview clip for that shows Vescovo speaking with Gumbel about the submersible community’s long-standing concerns around Rush and OceanGate:
That clip starts with Vescovo saying “Virtually all of us within the submersible community had expressed serious reservations about this design. And everyone agreed that it would be basically a matter of time before it had a serious incident.”
Gumbel then asks, “Stockton Rush, he said he wanted to be remembered as an innovator. How do you think he’s going to be remembered?” Vescovo says “I think, unfortunately, he’ll be remembered as someone who became so enthralled by his own thoughts of what the industry needed that he took on reckless risks, and took people with him on his experimental dives that had no business being in that submersible, including a 19-year-old young boy.”
It’s certainly significant to see Vescovo speaking out on this in strong terms, and particularly to hear him relay that there had been longstanding concerns about Rush’s actions in the submersible community before this disaster. And it’s notable to see Real Sports use the connection they made with their previous profile on Vescovo and his submersible (a clip of which can be seen here) to get some expertise on this Titan incident.
The full segment here (hosted by Gumbel, produced by Nisreen Habbal and Daniel Litke) should be interesting, as should the others on this month’s Real Sports. Those include Brad Daugherty speaking to Jonathan Jones about his NASCAR team’s Daytona 500 win, David Scott reporting on Iranian athlete protests, and Mary Carillo reporting on Special Olympics athletes in Florida using triathlon training to change their lives.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.