As Team USA began competing in artistic swimming, formerly known as synchronized swimming, at the Paris Olympics Monday, three-time Olympian Anita Alvarez is jumping into the pool with a new perspective and a new sense of appreciation for the sport after nearly losing her life in 2022.
The image of motionless Alvarez shocked the world when she fainted underwater, and her coach Andrea Fuentes jumped into the water, fully dressed, to grab Alvarez from the bottom of the pool.
“Thank goodness because who knows what another second underwater could have done,” Alvarez said, calling Fuentes her “hero.”
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The heart-dropping moments made the athlete question her future in the sport.
“I’d thought it would be much easier to stop here. I’ve had a great career,” Alvarez explained. “But at the same time, I’m like that's not how I want it to end. That’s now how it’s meant to end.”
After competing in the duet events at the Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Alvarez is now part of Team USA’s artistic swimming team.
It’s the first time the U.S. qualified for Artistic Swimming’s team event since 2008
“You have to know how to count music, have rhythm and stay on count with your movements because you're matching with eight other people,” she explained, adding how rigorous it is to train for artistic swimming, which requires athleticism, flexibility and musicality.
“It's like you have to be strong and have power and be able to explode yourself out of the water, be able to throw people out of the water, but you also have to have flexibility in a wide range of movements,” she said.
Alvarez, started artistic swimming at age 5, is also carrying the Olympic dreams for her entire family, as her mother who competed in an Olympic trials once for an artistic swimming duet event. Her father worked for the U.S. ice hockey team after her grandfather served as the official timekeeper of the Miracle on Ice game when the U.S. beat Russia during the 1980 Winter Olympics.
“Being a part of Team USA at the Olympic Games is something so special and just unique from any other competition,” Alvarez said. “I don't even know if I have the words to explain it, but it's just you can really feel that you're a part of something so much bigger than yourself.”
