SCOTS cycling hero Callum Skinner has shared hilarious footage of his battle with a giant Australian spider.
Skinner tweeted an image of the huge arachnid on the wall of his Adelaide apartment with the caption: “Help! I’ve been here less than 12 hours.”
He then shared footage of him dousing the beastie – thought to be a Huntsman – with insect spray that is supposed to kill in one second.
Despite showering the spider with half a can, his foe maintains its position on the wall, completely unperturbed.
Skinner then steps back and waits in vain to see if the creature will react. After around five seconds, he tries again with the same result.
Skinner then tweeted a picture of the spray, which states on its bottle “Kills in one spray”, with the caption “Aye right the things still alive…”
He added: “Seriously it’s been 20mins and it’s still kind of moving.”
Fellow Olympic gold medallist Philip Hindes then tweeted Skinner to ask him why he was not training, and he replied: “No training will happen until this thing is dead.”
Skinner, who won gold in the team sprint event at this year’s Olympics, clearly felt worried spending the night down under, also writing: “Feel like I’ve woken up in an Attenborough documentary, what the f*** are all these noises.”
Twitter users were quick to react to the video, and speculate as to what type of spider the cyclist’s tormeter was.
A user known mononymously as Tony, wrote: “Good use of the zoom lad haha, Looks like a Huntsman.”
Huntsman spiders, have a scarily large legspan of up to 12 inches and are known to bite and use venom to immobilise prey, but they are not considered dangerous to healthy humans.
Dr Ian Mackay, a virology professor at the University of Queensland, wrote: “Eek. Thats a tough one. They usually fall off quickly, stagger around, ball up and die after a spray.”
Skinner replied: “When an Aussie based scientist is concerned you know it’s bad.”
Some users suggested reasons for the spray not working.
Paralympic Judo medalist Samuel Ingram wrote: “That’s insect killer and the spider is an arachnid.”
Lex Wardle asked: “Have you tried an elongated spray?”
Skinner later confirmed the spray eventually worked, tweeting: “It did the job in the end!”
