Anita Álvarez, the American swimmer, has had a scare during the World Swimming Championships held in Budapest. The young woman was doing an individual artistic swimming exercise in the Isla Margarita pool when she lost consciousness and fell to the bottom of the pool.
According to her coach, Andrea Fuentes, the 25-year-old swimmer was not breathing and sank. Quickly Fuentes saw what was happening, she got into the water and pulled Anita to the surface.
The US swim team released a statement hours after the event to ensure the swimmer was okay.
It is not the first time that Álvarez has had a scare, last year he fainted after a qualifying test in Barcelona and was also rescued by his coach Andrea Fuentes.
“Anita is fine, the doctors checked all her vital signs and everything is normal, her heart rate, oxygen, sugar levels, blood pressure… Everything is fine,” her trainer said in an interview.
“Sometimes we forget that this happens in other high-endurance sports such as marathons, cycling, cross country. We have all seen images in which some athletes do not reach the finish line and others help them to reach it,” added Andrea Fuentes.
“When I got to her, I saw the lifeguard swimming at her pace. I grabbed her and pulled her out, but I saw that she wasn’t breathing and her jaw was closed and super hard. I slapped her twice and yelled at her: Anita! breathe! And she wasn’t breathing. The lifeguard kept her on her back. In first aid they teach you that when you’re not breathing you have to turn him on his side and I turned his head because the other didn’t know anything. I had to rescue them. two almost because the other did not know how to swim well”, he lamented in the interview granted to the program The spar from Ser chain.
“I understand that I am an Olympian and that I can swim faster. He wanted to do her job, but I wanted to get her out of it as soon as possible and he was weighing me down too much. In the end we got her out of the water, but she was put on her back on her stretcher and I insisted that she was not breathing and that she had to turn her over. After two minutes is when she has started to breathe, ”adds the coach.
“I don’t know if it was her first time because they tried to put masks on her and what she wanted was to be calm and she kept crying asking to be left alone. In the end I had to fight a bit with them. It was as if they were hysterical ”, has expressed her dissatisfaction with the World Cup medical services.
