“I felt my fingers go numb”
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With her fainting spell, Anita Alvarez caused a shock at the swimming world championships in Budapest. She sank unconscious to the bottom of the pool. Now the synchronized swimmer comments on the dramatic moments for the first time.
IIn her memory everything was fine. “I still had the feeling that it was a really good performance,” Anita Alvarez told NBC in her first interview two days after her fainting spell.
The American synchronized swimmer fainted and fell to the ground during her freestyle World Championships in Budapest on Wednesday. Long moments of uncertainty drove her under water until her trainer Andrea Fuentes pulled her out of the pool.
Now, 48 hours apart, Alvarez could laugh about the incident. She had previously given the all-clear on Instagram. “I’m fine and healthy,” she wrote. A video of her coach shows the 25-year-old at the team dinner.
Now Alvarez described her memories of the dramatic incident. “I felt my fingers go numb. Then it went black. It happened very quickly,” she said. Arriving at the edge of the pool after the rescue operation and breathing again, she quickly realized that nothing bad had happened.
“It happened like in slow motion”
Alvarez still had heartwarming words for her rescuer. “I’m just really happy to have a coach like Andrea Fuentes,” she said. It is only thanks to the courageous intervention of the trainer that nothing worse happened.
Fuentes had already found clear words for the lack of rescue measures by the official helpers. They just “gawped” and “didn’t react”. Now she describes her feelings during the rescue operation again. “For me it happened like in slow motion. It felt like a whole year,” Fuentes said.
It wasn’t Alvarez’s first stress-related fainting spell during a competition. Still, she wants to keep going. The team final is already on Friday afternoon. Subject to medical approval, Alvarez will jump in the water. She is already on the team list of the Americans.