The 25-year-old synchronized swimmer completed her routine in the solo free final on Wednesday before she reportedly lost consciousness and sunk to the bottom. Team USA’s head coach, Andrea Fuentes, stated that the pool’s lifeguards weren’t acting fast enough, and Fuentes dove into the pool and pulled Alvarez up to the surface.
On Thursday, the team posted an update on Instagram, addressing the incident.
“Watching yesterday’s medical emergency of our 2x Olympian Anita Alvarez was heartbreaking for our community. Anita gave an exceptional solo performance and has competed brilliantly in four preliminary and three final competitions across six days of the 2022 Fina World Championship event,” the statement read.
“Anita has been evaluated by medical staff and will continue to be monitored. She is already feeling much better and using today to rest. Whether or not she will compete in the free team final on Friday, June 24th will be determined by Anita and expert medical staff,” it concluded.
Fuentes spoke to Spain’s Marca newspaper following the incident, saying, “It was a big scare. I had to jump in because the lifeguards weren’t doing it.”
“I said things weren’t right, I was shouting at the lifeguards to get into the water, but they didn’t catch what I said or they didn’t understand,” Fuentes said, according to the outlet. “I went as quickly as I could, as if it were an Olympic final.”
Fuentes put out a statement on Wednesday night, reassuring fans that “Anita is okay.”
“We sometimes forget that this happens in other high-endurance sports,” Fuentes said in an earlier Instagram post. “Marathon, cycling, cross country… we all have seen images where some athletes don’t make it to the finish line and others help them to get there. Our sport is no different than others, just in a pool, we push through limits and sometimes we find them.
“Anita feels good now and the doctors also say she is okay,” she added, saying that Alvarez will decide whether or not to swim in the free team finals on Friday.
According to The Washington Post, Alvarez has fainted once before in the water. In Barcelona last year, Alvarez lost consciousness during an Olympics qualifying event, prompting her coach to dive in and pull her from the water.
Alvarez competed in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and has been swimming artistically since she was 5 years old.
Newsweek reached out to Team USA Artistic Swimming for comment.
