The rescue of Anita Álvarez during the World Artistic Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in June 2022 is one of the most striking images in the history of artistic swimming. It is impossible to forget the moment when the young Mexican-American was finishing her routine during the freestyle final when she fainted and her coach, Andrea Fuentes, jumped into the water to help her and bring her to the surface. The photographs of the moment, shared millions of times on social media, are iconic.
But beyond the unforgettable images, the moment was critical. Alvarez did not have time to come out to breathe and could not hear the applause of the public. Her teammates knew that something was not right. She spent two eternal minutes without breathing, unconscious, with her jaw clenched and water in her lungs while her coach He desperately shouted at her: “Anita, breathe!” The panicked faces of the paramedics and rescuers said it all.
This sport, which used to be known as Synchronized swimming Until the authorities changed its name in 2017, it can seem much simpler than it really is. Watching the swimmers in their colorful swimsuits, flawless makeup and perfect hairdos, their forced smiles can be confusing to anyone. But it will never be easy to feel comfortable without breathing, and even less so when underwater.
In an interview with EL PAÍS after the accident, Álvarez told journalist Diego Torres that, as in any sport, artistic swimmers push their bodies to the limit and sometimes go beyond it. “People don’t realize it because an image of harmony and happiness is given. We smile with makeup. These little things hide how tremendously demanding this is.” The swimmer also pointed out that people don’t imagine how frequent fainting spells are. Although she has attracted a lot of attention for what happened to her at the World Championships, in this sport swimmers faint every day.
Just imagine the growing sensation the longer you stay underwater, holding your breath, kicking your feet, paddling with your arms, accepting the pain and staying calm while performing a series of humanly impossible exercises that are part of a choreography under a pool. The brain cries out for oxygen.
Olympic blood runs through Anita’s veins
Anita Alvarez (Buffalo, New York, 27 years old) has Olympic blood and a passion for sports in her veins. Her mother was a university artistic swimmer, her maternal grandfather was an ice hockey referee at the 1980 Winter Olympics and her father was a coach of two Olympic athletes.
Thin, with dark hair and big brown eyes, Alvarez will be competing in her third Olympic Games, having competed in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. In 2024, she will once again dive into the water to fight for an Olympic medal. She has already become a veteran of the sport, and her experience at World Championships, at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, and the recognition as the best artistic swimmer in the United States, obtained together with her partner Mariya Koroleva, have more than assured her place in the Team USA.
Anita Álvarez has been preparing for years to hold her breath for several seconds, execute perfect lines with her body and perform a series of acrobatics under the crystal-clear water of the pool, with the aim of conquering the judges and obtaining an outstanding score from the competition. August 5-10 at the Saint-Denis Aquatic Centre.
Heading to Paris 2024
For a high-performance athlete, the work never ends. Eight or ten hours of daily training never seem to be enough when striving for perfection. Every four years, with the arrival of the Summer Olympics, the most important international meeting, it becomes the perfect stage for the eight swimmers who make up the representative teams and duos of each qualified country to execute the routines they have tirelessly practiced, perform shoulder to shoulder, form human pyramids, perform acrobatic turns in the air and coordinate perfectly with the music to get a place on the podium.
Now, with a new Olympic challenge at hand, Anita Alvarez and the U.S. team, consisting of Daniella Ramirez, Megumi Field, Jaime Czarkowski, Jacklyn Luu, Audrey Kwon, Keana Hunter, Ruby Remati and Calista Liu, will compete in the free and technical routines against the other teams, hoping to win a medal in Paris 2024.
