Anita Alvarez was the center of a dramatic episode at the world swimming championships in Budapest on Wednesday when the artistic swimmer had to be rescued from the bottom of the pool by her coach after losing consciousness in the water.
American Alvarez had completed her solo free final at the World Aquatics Championships when she fainted and sank to the bottom of the pool. Andrea Fuentes, her coach, quickly realized something was friends and dive in fully clothed to pull Alvarez up to the surface.
Alvarez, competing at her third world championships, was not breathing when Fuentes dragged her with some assistance to the side of the pool. The swimmer was taken from there to the pool’s medical center, and Team USA later issued a statement saying she was doing well.
Fuentes said that despite the incident, Alvarez still hoped to compete in Friday’s team event.
“It was a big scare,” Fuentes was reported as saying by Spanish newspaper Marca. “I was scared because I saw she wasn’t breathing, but now she is doing very well.”
It is not the first time Alvarez has failed in the pool, according to reports. A similar scene played out at an Olympic qualifier in Spain last year when a fully-clothed Fuentes again jumped into the pool to make a rescue.
At the time, Alvarez’s mother, Karen, said, “Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen to her before.”
Spaniard Fuentes, a hugely successful former synchronized swimmer with four Olympic, 16 world championship and 11 European championship medals to her name, is the US’s senior national team head coach.
“She only had water in her lungs, once she started breathing again everything was OK,” said Fuentes. “It felt like a whole hour.
“She wasn’t breathing … I went as quickly as I could, as if it were an Olympic final.”