American swimmer Anita Alvarez has starred in the most dramatic moment of this Wednesday’s World Swimming Championships in Budapest. Athlete Margarita was finishing her practice at the Island Pool during the final of artistic swimming free singles when, about to finish her performance, she lost consciousness and remained at the bottom of the pool without showing any signs of reaction. Quickly, her trainer, Spanish Andrea Fuentes, who was ready for the road, drowned in the water to pull her while medical aid arrived.
Between Fuentes and a member of the tournament organization, they managed to get the 25-year-old swimmer out of the pool so he could be looked after by the health team, who quickly took him out of the enclosure on a stretcher. Minutes later, after the test was over, the US team reported on their social networks that Alvarez was “fine” and out of danger.
Fuentes, whose intervention was necessary to avoid a worse situation, is the most successful swimmer in the history of Spanish swimming, winner of three silver and one bronze at the Olympic Games, 13 World Cup medals and 11 medals at the full European Championships. Over the years he was a duet with Gemma Menguel and since retiring from pool in 2013, he has been training a number of athletes. One of them, Anita Alvarez, whose life was saved this Wednesday.
“I saw the lifeguards become paralyzed and I jumped”
“I saw how it sank; the pole weighed 20kg and the lifeguard came at his own pace”
️ Andrea Fuentes relates like this @ellarguero Rescue of Anita Alvarez, a swimmer who fainted after exercising pic.twitter.com/l4k2KSHTQa
— el larguero (@ellarguero) 22 June 2022
Hours later, Fuentes gave an interview for the program. spar From Cadena Ser in which he explained that this is not the first time that his disciple has faced a similar incident. “Athletes look for the boundary of the body and sometimes we find it”, he explained. He then went on to describe what was the most dramatic moment of the World Championships: “I saw the lifeguards not jump into the water because they were paralyzed. I shouted at him from the other end to get into the water now. I have seen how he was stunned and I jumped straight into the water towards him. I saw how she was sinking and swimming as fast as I could,” said the coach. “I have had the fastest apnea of my life, when I was preparing for the Olympics. Now it is remembered as a rare story”, he said. Anita Alvarez is in perfect condition, Fuentes said.
“I was giving everything I could and the polo shirt weighed 20kg on me,” Fuentes described. “When I reached there, I saw the lifeguard swimming at his own pace. I grabbed her and pulled her out, but I noticed that she was not breathing and her jaw was closed and very hard. I slapped her twice and shouted: Anita, breathe! And she was not breathing. The lifeguard kept his face up. In first aid they teach you that when someone is not breathing you have to lay them on your side and I turn their heads because the other one didn’t know anything. I almost had to release both of them because the other didn’t know how to swim well”, he lamented, though he has said he understands the situation. “I understand that I am an Olympian and I can swim fast. He wanted to do his job, but I wanted to get him out as soon as possible and he was weighing me down a lot. In the end we took him out of the water.” pulled her out but they put her on her back on the stretcher and I insisted that she is not breathing and I have to turn her over. After two minutes she has started breathing.
The coach’s complaints have also spread to World Cup medical services. “I don’t know if it was her first time because they tried to put a mask on her and all she wanted was calm and she kept crying and asking to be alone. In the end I had to fight with him a little bit. It was like they were hysterical”, Fuentes explained.
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