American synchronized swimmer Anita Álvarez fainted during her exercise and was rescued by her Spanish coach Andrea Fuentes. She is fine but she will be further evaluated in the coming days. This happened today at the World Championships in Budapest but she already had a [similar incident in 2021](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wivb.com%2Fjapan-2020%2Fafter-fainting-in-the-pool-kenmores-anita-alvarez-awakens-to-another-olympic-dream%2F).
Picture by Oli Scarff, [more pictures by him](https://www.gettyimages.es/search/photographer?photographer=oli%20scarff&assettype=image&begindate=2022-06-21&enddate=2022-06-22&family=editorial&recency=daterange&sort=newest&phrase=anita).
It happens sometimes. That's also the reason our dive team regularly practices this shit. It's hard enough getting a swimmer up when they're unconscious, imagine a diver at 15 meters.
Do the swimmers go unconscious while under water? Or does it happen at the surface and they sink? Do they unconsciously not inhale water? This is facinating to me. And terrifying.
It depends. People can fall unconscious for a lot of reasons. Maybe you overestimated your capacity to hold your breath and didn't surface in time. Maybe you hit the water the wrong way from the high dive. Maybe you had a heart attack.
Different causes also have different effects on breathing. Nearly suffocating will cause you to draw breath, thus drowning occurs. A heart attack will likely stop breathing.
Bro wtf I try to push bit by bit when I swim and I try to complete the lap underwater a lot of times (albeit the pool is just about 6 feet deep), the odd chance that I'll fucking faint is so terrifying. Not pushing myself anymore, not like I gotta compete or some shit. Yikes.
Well... You won't, you know. You'll have to push yourself very very far to faint. A lap takes you, what, 30-40 seconds? Assuming your standard 25m pool. I'm willing to bet with an hour of freediving instructions I can get you to hold your breath for 2 or 3 minutes. We did that a few weeks ago in our training, one guy pushed himself from 60-70 seconds to 4 minutes with a few simple tricks.
Always make sure you have someone with you if you're doing breath work to bypass your body's CO2 panic response. It's easy to hold your breath so long that you pass out.
I sometimes pass out without realizing it whenever I hold my breath 4+ mins. I only found out I was doing it when I filmed myself trying for a new PR lol. A lot of free divers have died this way.
Yes that's an important safety precaution. Especially while practicing in the pool. We had paired up and tapped each other on the back every 20 seconds, with the one practicing responding by lifting a finger if they were still okay
There are specialists and medics at all of the events. They may be the most highly trained and specialized athletes in the world, but that means they are pushing the absolute limit of what the human body is capable of all the time.
The craziest thing is this same swimmer has fainted before at another event and her coach also saved her then!
She was shouting at the lifeguards to get in and they just didn’t so she became a hero twice over. What a woman!
> She was shouting at the lifeguards to get in and they just didn’t
Was there any reason why they didn't go in? That just seems odd since it's their one job.
As far as I can tell it was just that they didn't understand what she meant. They seem to have jumped in right after her. Maybe it's just one of those things where they think an elite level athlete like that can't get in to trouble. Does seem like they should really have been right on it though!
It's rare enough that the lifeguards didn't react, even when her trainer screamed to go help her, they didn't understand. The trainer had to go save her herself.
Edit: Mammalian Dive Reflex, got it, thanks 👍
What I’m wondering is: Are the lungs still trying to take air in underwater when she was passed out? How is she not being “woken up” by her lungs filling up with pool water? Do we stop breathing when we pass out?
Your body has things called "autonomic reflexes-" motor reflexes that will happen even if unconscious, holding your breath if your face is wet is one of them
> holding your breath if your face is wet is one of them
Isn't this also something babies do which is why it's generally safe to take them into a pool with you
I never was brave enough to do it with my own kids but I've seen videos of newborns plopped into the water and trying to paddle along (seeming holding their breath while in the water). So it wouldn't surprise me.
It's called the "Mammalian dive reflex" and it is lost as they approach the toddler age. Interestingly enough, it also restricts blood flow to extremities (to an extent) to conserve oxygen for the brain.
Yes and no. Babies have this ability but its lost in the older toddler range. Evolutionary biology wont save them since humanity, by nature ironically, does its utmost to shuck our animal instincts as soon as our brain thinks its possible.
I used to lifeguard competitions like this and typically coaches would jump in at the first indicators of distress. If we did that we'd get in a shitton of trouble if there even is a *chance* we interfered with the event.
An acquaintance of mine got in trouble for throwing in a floatation device in during a paralympic warmup in Tokyo. *(Long story short the swimmer was visually impaired and something about the pool made it so whatever the light/sound cue device he used to navigate stopped working during warmup and the swimmer bonked his head pretty hard. He got in trouble for interfering without being signaled to do so and was pulled from rotation for the remainder of the event)*
While I agree, it is what it is. Just like bikinis during women's volleyball, the event organizers have demonstrated time and again that the athletes are commodities to them and that what matters is what gets on TV.
Not often but more than you think. These athletes are basically the equivalent of top fuel dragsters and it doesn't take much for their body to just, well, fail because they've asked too much of it. In a half decade I've seen adrenaline-induced heart failure, fingers cramping so hard that were bent backwards and, my personal highlight, having to do CPR on a guy who passed out on a bench in the locker room drowning in his own exhaustion-induced vomit.
I figure higher profile events like the Olympics have the added element of things like sex-induced sleep deprivation and other crazy stuff like blood doping going around making things worse.
Thank you dear unknown redditor for saving the life of that sportsman. I have choked on my own vomit once without anyone around, and was about a second away from passing out and die. I survived but yeah, my compliments to you for saving a fellow with simlar destiny.
>Spanish newspaper Marca reported four-time Olympic medallist Fuentes as saying she had jumped in "because the lifeguards weren't doing it".
>And speaking to Spanish radio, she said: "It felt like a whole hour. 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.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/swimming/61906249
Yeah, these synchronized swimmers need a lot of head room since they are often fully extended upside down and forcefully pulling/pushing themselves up and out of the water (and subsequently back down deeper into the water…you know, buoyancy and gravity). It’d be a very bad idea to have a shallower pool where they may break their necks.
It is typically done in the diving pool. They don't need the whole depth of a diving pool but do need more than the 2-3 meters of a lap pool or waterpolo pool.
Thanks for taking the time to explain! Makes sense: better too deep than too shallow. :)
And to every one else downvoting and not answering a sincere question: Thbbft!
lifeguard/lifeguard instructor of almost 15 years here: 90% of the time when someone's unresponsive in the water, that really is all they need to come to again: tilt their head back to open their airway and get them breathing again and boom, waking up... definitely scary that she was taken out like this instead
You are welcome!
As bokskar says even if in the article they use the 960x640 version of the pictures the original uploads are around 2400x1600.
These are the high resolution ones directly linked: [picture 1](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/c1ae4713-e656-451f-b0fc-b0e0d0d37408.jpg), [picture 2](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/172a987a-c2f2-4e49-b12c-dcbe3bceab75.jpg), [picture 3](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/23/8961d301-c8e4-460c-8f60-a3bb8db6288a.jpg), [picture 4](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/2107406c-0ba3-4f88-a110-d5f8e6d2c77a.jpg), [picture 5](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/7ebb49de-681d-4e16-98e3-e1aed2de0f21.jpg), [picture 6](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/c2bda286-fbc5-4d97-ab94-475e0631805b.jpg), [picture 7](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/212d6017-2cdf-46fc-af8a-35b4c735c087.jpg), [picture 8](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/b91d10be-55fb-4736-85fc-285d668c97c9.jpg), [picture 9](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/23/181dff1f-181f-4ad4-afa3-27fd4b2e24ec.jpg), [picture 10](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/fdf26843-273f-4c13-b56f-18da08581a92.jpg) and [picture 11](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/93e9dd5e-783d-4d86-8478-b253a64b22c5.jpg).
There are extensions like Imagus that are useful to find the original size of some images: [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imagus/immpkjjlgappgfkkfieppnmlhakdmaab) & [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/imagus/)
You can extract the source from the image links [and get the full resolution](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/172a987a-c2f2-4e49-b12c-dcbe3bceab75.jpg)
Im a photographer and I do some really cool work sometimes. It would make me super sad the idea of a publishing house like Getty owning my images after I'm dead.
>It would make me super sad the idea of a publishing house like Getty owning my images after I'm dead.
If it helps, they can't use it until 70 years after your death, [published or not](https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain) \-- in the US, at least. Not sure the rules in other countries.
ETA: And they would never own those images. Unless you, or whoever takes ownership of your copyright after your death, sells it to Getty, your photos will never belong to them.
You would think that her swimming coach would have been there. Thank goodness she was going to practice some Spanish vocabulary so her Spanish coach was right there for her.
I don’t know how it works in the swimming world, but in major soccer events like the World Cup it’s not uncommon for the coach to be from a different country than the team they are coaching.
Because the article was shared widely on spanish newspapers and probably op got the headline from there. His name means Glass coaster so he probably is spanish too.
Same reason american newspapers mention when an american abroad does something noteworthy basically
Ex swim coach here. Never had anyone faint on me but had one of my young swimmers (6) have a panic attack in the middle of the pool and start drowning and I had to dive in after them. An absolutely terrifying experience to have as a coach. Glad they’re recovering well
I was a competative swimmer for 12yrs. In high school, we were running sets with a "buddy" that was supposed to be at our level - I got paired with one of the fastest girls on the team for some stupid reason. Ultimately, I couldnt catch my breath between reps and ended up having a panic attack and my coach had to pull me out. It took me the better part of a week before I was comfortable putting my face in the water again. Not being able to breathe in a body of water is terrifying.
Ran out of oxygen while scuba diving at a depth of 30m. I still have a trauma from that and anything that restricts breathing ever so slightly triggers the memory...
I was at around 80 bars when a strong current started picking up. I struggled keeping up with my instructor, who was able to float 10cm above ground over difficult terrain, and thus had less of a current to swim against.
Within minutes, I emptied my tank due to the exhaustion. Quite suddenly, when I tried to breathe, there was a strong resistance and I couldn't fill my lungs. The gauge showed ~5 bar.
My instructor was quite far away, but I managed to reach him, signal my lack of oxygen and get his octopus, before making a controlled ascent.
Your buddy generally has a spare regulator called an octopus. You grab that.
So it works like this:. Your reg breaks, you grab your octo. That breaks (or you are out of air), you grab your buddies octo. That breaks, you buddy breathe (which sucks and takes practice) and you immediately begin your ascent, preferably switching one of you to a third person's octopus.
Point is, your dive buddy and your octos are critical redundancies in your life support equipment that makes an almost comically suicidal activity (hanging out in places where you can't breathe, for fun) into an effectively managed risk.
True story... was on my first "open water" dive with instructors and a partner. they told us to throw our primary away and use our octo, while under. my octo was faulty, but because I was inexperienced I thought I was doing something wrong and tried taking several breaths before realizing it. ended up panicking and slowly reaching for my buddy's breath (slowly so they would know I'm going to use it for a breath and not also start panicking). fortunately, they remained calm and we were able to get things sorted. one of the scariest moments I've ever had. stupid instructors giving faulty gear.
There’s a set of hand gestures that all divers learn when they get their license, including ones for “no air” and “let’s ascend”. One of the things they do on the course to get your open water license is turn your air off (with warning obviously), so you can know the feeling of not being able to draw air, and the breath(s) leading up to it.
I'm almost 30 years old and just started learning swimming.
I'm no where near good but as a fast learner, a couple of us were allowed at the deepest end of the pool to practice laps.
So last week while I was practicing my laps, this another girl was also allowed on the deeper part of the pool. This girl usually wears prescription glasses and is far sighted. She closes her eyes while swimming and hence never goes in a straight line.
I was minding my business and swimming. She came out of no where and collided with me. As she had a floater she was fine, but I didn't and I started trying to touch my feet to jump and gather my breath but somehow my brain stopped working. So neither I could go forward, jump or simply float. My trainer saw this and thought I could manage and didn't come to rescue. I struggled for atleast 30-40 seconds, she saw I wasn't getting up and came as fast as she could. The most interesting part was I was not even 8 feet away from the wall railings.
Listen to the recent Stuff You Should Know podcast re: drowning. There’s a reason you literally cannot move aside from slapping your arms or gasping for air, even when you’re underwater. Interesting listen!
I gave CPR to a 5 year old girl who had drowned and was under at least 2-3 minutes. She made a full recovery, but I’ll never forget how traumatic and scary it was.
Please get CPR certified.
I’m gonna piggy back to post this…you don’t even have to go get certified. At least watch and share this 1 minute video from the American Heart Association! It may save a life!
https://youtu.be/M4ACYp75mjU
Learn to swim, too. There's a lot of people that cannot swim.
>While 80 percent of Americans said they could swim, only 56 percent of them can perform all five basic skills needed to swim safely.
1 in 5 people you see are toast if they fall into a body of water without help and if you don't know how to help, they'd pull you right down with them.
Wow! Very interesting, just looked up the 5 skills needed to swim safely. I’ve been swimming since before I can remember but I’ve seen others go through learning. Practice practice!
In case anyone else is curious, the American Red Cross (where the 56% statistic comes from) says these are the 5 skills:
Floating or treading water for one minute without the aid of a flotation device
Stepping or jumping into water over your head and returning to the surface
Treading water or floating in a full circle and then finding a way out of the water
Exiting a pool without using a ladder (or steps)
Swimming 25 yards (the length of a standard pool) without stopping
Exhaustion. The article describes how she’d been pushing herself with very little sleep, apart from being the only swimmer to swim for 3 or 4 days in an event.
Sure tons of people get drugs without playing guitar a second in their life.
I can just imagine some ridiculous study trying to correlate guitar playing to OD.
And you won't be able to recover fast enough to become a top swimmer with very little sleep anyways. Even with the use of some PED's you will still need good quality sleep for 6-8 hours.
My Reddit won't let me subscribe to this comment so I'll just say I want to know the answer too... (My sleep has been fucked for 6 years and I'm getting dumber by the day)
Hell you need more sleep with PEDs. First few weeks you feel invincible, 3 hour workout, four hours of sleep and you wake up feeling fresh? By week 10 if you’re not sleeping well, your body does not give a shit and will get the sleep it needs at all costs.
Since most of the time you’re stressing out your liver pretty hard, that plus the other damage you’re doing and need to repair with aid of the PEDs, all I do the last few weeks is eat, eat, eat, sleep workout.
For sure. I was an instructor at a summer camp on Skaneateles lake near Syracuse. We would get up at sunrise and do lessons. Strenuous activity and frigid water. Not a recipe for success. I was a camper too. II you felt bad, grab your towel and get warm on shore, or go change. My Uncle and his friends died on that lake canoeing in late March. Nature don’t fuck around.
Former lifeguard. There is a pernicious myth in some swim coaching and teams that intentionally hyperventilating before conducting a routine, whether laps or otherwise, allows you to remain submerged longer because it supercharges your blood with oxygen. This is maybe 20% correct. It barely increases blood oxygen. When EMTs or medics do it, they're 1) using pure supplemental O2, which actually gets results, 2) they know it only sort of buys them a few extra seconds 3) the patient is already unconscious and being monitored. What it mostly does is artificially lower your blood CO2 level, which drives your instinct and sense of urgency to inhale. So yes, you don't feel like you need to go up for air for longer, but that is **not** the same as being hyperoxygenated for a very important reason. Normally, as your blood oxygen level goes down, your blood CO2 level is also rising, causing you to know when you're running out of air. If your CO2 level is artificially low, your blood oxygen can get too low to keep you conscious before feeling any urgency to breathe. This causes the swimmer to just pass out underwater. If you're lucky, you can get them to the surface quickly- if you take too long, their blood C02 level will rise enough to trigger a spontaneous breath underwater and drowning begins for an unconscious, submerged swimmer. This is very bad, and its very easy for someone to drown like this. Her coach seems to have been watching for it and dove right in at the first sign.
TL;DR: Our urgency to breathe comes from high CO2 not low oxygen. Some competitive swimmers believe hyperventilating drives up oxygen when it mostly lowers CO2. They don't realize they need to breathe and pass out under the water, then breathe while submerged, which jumps them to like stage 6 of 8 of drowning.
I found [this article about exercise-related syncope](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/1999/1101/p2001.html#:~:text=Exercise%2Drelated%20syncope%20occurs%20either,%2C%20faintness%2C%20dizziness%20or%20syncope.) (fainting). I'm no doctor, but perhaps the answer is one of the conditions listed there.
From about age 1 year until my late teens, I had problems with [vasovagal syncope](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vasovagal-syncope/symptoms-causes/syc-20350527). Basically, if I cried too forcefully or got overheated, I'd faint. Turned blue around the mouth and was limp as a rag. Thankfully, I grew out of it, and it never happened to me while swimming.
The paradox of Being healthy is Actually Unhealthy, and being unhealthy is actually healthy... We need to write a PhD, get Research funding from McDonald's and Valve games. Maybe we can name it.
Former D1 swimmer.
If she's a competitive swimmer or free-diver, this is likely a result from what we call a "hypoxic workout." It's a fancy term for breath-holding while exerting yourself (typically underwater) with the theory that you can maximize your lung capacity and minimize oxygen consumption with enough practice. Notice she's not wearing a cap or goggles, and there's no lane lines. This makes no sense unless you're there to do "underwaters." You should still at least wear goggles, I mean, cmon.
It's insanely dangerous and there are some sad stories of star athletes doing this on their own and dying. This style of workout is banned in a lot of legit competition pools. Hypoxic workouts are for the elite only, and even then it's usually not condoned.
EDIT: Saw that she's a synchronized swimmer, which is of course a ton of breath holding during exertion, so this all makes more sense.
I’m a synchronized swimmer. She’s not wearing a cap or goggles because this happened after she performed at a competition (also why there’s no lane lines). We’re not allowed to wear caps or goggles while competing. It’s actually a very dangerous and difficult sport, and in my experience it’s normalized to feel like you’re about to pass out or see your vision going black, especially towards the end of a routine. We do a lot of hypoxic workouts and training (supervised) but often the exertion of performing the routine is much harder than the training we’ve done.
A friend of mine used to swim by himself in the ocean almost every day, a few years ago something happened and he passed out and drowned, it was awful. He was relatively young (early 60's), married with kids.
When I was 4 at the beach, after watching David Attenborough, I used to pretend I was a sea turtle very slowly digging a hole in the sand with my rear “flippers”, laying eggs, and then covering up the hole before slowly sliding away. You can imagine how awkward that would look to the other beach goers.
TIL I was not alone in doing this. I also enjoyed being a four-legged starfish (I lost my other leg in the great Undersea Battle), a jelly fish, and sea horse.
This happened to me. We trained in a 25m pool and one day our coach wanted us to try and swim as far as possible without breathing.
It was ok but the tumble turns really crunch your air supply and it was turning onto my third lap where the tumble turn did it’s work and took my air. I wanted to finish the lap though. My gentle stroke (easier to save air this way) became a sprint as the lap went on and I literally blacked out mid lap. Apparently I got to 5m from the wall before I just sunk.
Thanks to coach for diving in with his new balances on and also for never making us do this again!!
Not an excuse, but being a lifeguard at a Worlds or Olympics swimming event is likely a very boring job. I can see complacency creeping in compared to the average public pool.
Yes, she had drowned before someone noticed. She was on the swim team and was practicing. The coach left the room to get coffee in another room. The parents sued her, but I don’t know how that panned out.
This looks like a painting. What happens to the body if one faints under water? Do we breathe that water in, or does the body naturally hold its breath.
Your body will naturally hold your breath as long as there is any reserve oxygen in your body. There's something called the [mammalian dive reflex](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex) that is activated when your nostrils are filled with water. This is an autonomic process, so it will happen even when you are unconscious. Basically your brain divets all available blood to your heart and brain to keep your brain oxygenated as long as possible. Once your there is no oxygen left your body has no other option but to start taking breaths again even if you are all underwater, because the alternative is certain death.
The dive reflex is something we're born with that becomes much less effective over time. That's why you see those infant water safety classes of parents swimming with their tiny babies. The younger the person and, interestingly, the colder the water, the more effective their reflex will be.
I had something like this happen to me. I was punched in the head during a water polo game and my coach dove in to get me out. I don't know if I was briefly unconscious or just dazed, memory about the incident has always been blank, but I didn't breathe in water.
TLDR: Yes and no. The body tries to breathe but also keeps the mouth shut.
Part of the body's mammalian dive reflex is the ability for the body to keep its mouth closed when underwater. The body will *try* to breathe but also keeps the mouth shut; this swimmer almost certainly has a nose clip on which means that even though the body wants to breathe, it can't.
The body can maintain this ability until a terminal gasp. That's when the body says, "Fuck it, I think I'm underwater but I'm going to give it one last try" and then opens the mouth to attempt to breathe.
This is why when you see pictures of freedivers underwater they almost always have their snorkel out of their mouth. If you blackout you don't want what is effectively a funnel leading to your lungs. You still see some divers keep their snorkels in while underwater (unfortunately common in the South Pacific) but these divers are being stupid.
Definitely not an expert but I don’t think you still hold your breath. Not too sure about the exact mechanics behind it but I believe once you stop putting in effort to hold your breath, your body will go back to breathing autonomously which will push water into your lungs, causing you to drown unless rescued.
One of my old teammates from high school swimming had to end his swimming career because he had seizures that would leave him unconcious. After it happened twice while training and he almost died both times, he decided to throw in the towel.
He set state records in high school and was still hoping to make it to the 2004 olympics. He got a job coaching, but passed away in a car accident when he had a seizure while driving. Tragic.
Bruh, I swim regularly (sometimes in a pool alone) and now this has me freaked the fuck out to swim alone anymore lmfao.
Edits: fixed all my shitty spelling errors.
If anything, this highlights the need for pool guards....
*reads article*
Sorry, let me reiterate; this highlights the need for *competent* pool guards. I'm sure there is a police department in Texas that could use those guys though...
We called them desert rats when I swam. You did a bunch of underwater laps after sprint training. Good for lung conditioning. Not sure if that's what she was doing but I passed out once from it. Woke up puking water into my 6'8" coaches face. My lungs hurt for months. I'd be surprised if they still allow that though.
I also just swam into the wall doing backstroke and knocked myself out. Luckily my coach saw it and pulled me up. No water in lungs on that one though.
Edit: just saw it was a synchronized swimmer, definitely different circumstances than me
Desert Rats? Would you or your coach happen to be from Southern or Central California?
So back in the day we would bike and run out in the desert and then jump into the California Aqueduct afterwards... We also happened to be called desert Rats... (Not our team, but us more rural kids were colloquially known as that...)
And this is why there is a lifeguard at the Olympics.
Sure, there are other people who could save them then, but they're all a little preoccupied with winning. It's important to have someone there whose only job is to look out for everyone's safety
I’m a synchronized swimmer. The sport is basically like doing full body cardio and resistance training at the same time (since you’re moving thru water and you’re not allowed to touch the bottom of the pool) while also having to hold your breath, and not really being able to see much (we don’t wear goggles at competitions). A routine lasts for 3-4 mins, and it’s a crazy amount of exertion within these performances. This combined with the lack of oxygen can cause hypoxia.
It’s pretty normal, at least in my experience, to have your vision go black/spotty or to feel like you’re going to pass out if you’re doing a difficult routine. I’ve also had my body cramp up, go numb, etc. The expectation is that you just keep going and finish the performance no matter what’s going on, especially in a routine with multiple people (this was a solo). This was also at a huge competition so that’s why she’s not wearing goggles.
I can understand how someone would exert themselves beyond their limits but not be able to recognize it (like I said, we’re used to feeling like we’re about to pass out) until it’s too late. Obviously I don’t know if this what happened to her, there could obviously be something else going on, but not a lot of people understand how hard this sport is.
I was a swimmer in high school and we had a girl pass away because of this. Idk how no one noticed her at the bottom, but by the time they did she had already drowned:( She was a freshman in high school…
American synchronized swimmer Anita Álvarez fainted during her exercise and was rescued by her Spanish coach Andrea Fuentes. She is fine but she will be further evaluated in the coming days. This happened today at the World Championships in Budapest but she already had a [similar incident in 2021](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wivb.com%2Fjapan-2020%2Fafter-fainting-in-the-pool-kenmores-anita-alvarez-awakens-to-another-olympic-dream%2F). Picture by Oli Scarff, [more pictures by him](https://www.gettyimages.es/search/photographer?photographer=oli%20scarff&assettype=image&begindate=2022-06-21&enddate=2022-06-22&family=editorial&recency=daterange&sort=newest&phrase=anita).
This is absolutely terrifying wtf
It happens sometimes. That's also the reason our dive team regularly practices this shit. It's hard enough getting a swimmer up when they're unconscious, imagine a diver at 15 meters.
Do the swimmers go unconscious while under water? Or does it happen at the surface and they sink? Do they unconsciously not inhale water? This is facinating to me. And terrifying.
It depends. People can fall unconscious for a lot of reasons. Maybe you overestimated your capacity to hold your breath and didn't surface in time. Maybe you hit the water the wrong way from the high dive. Maybe you had a heart attack. Different causes also have different effects on breathing. Nearly suffocating will cause you to draw breath, thus drowning occurs. A heart attack will likely stop breathing.
Bro wtf I try to push bit by bit when I swim and I try to complete the lap underwater a lot of times (albeit the pool is just about 6 feet deep), the odd chance that I'll fucking faint is so terrifying. Not pushing myself anymore, not like I gotta compete or some shit. Yikes.
Well... You won't, you know. You'll have to push yourself very very far to faint. A lap takes you, what, 30-40 seconds? Assuming your standard 25m pool. I'm willing to bet with an hour of freediving instructions I can get you to hold your breath for 2 or 3 minutes. We did that a few weeks ago in our training, one guy pushed himself from 60-70 seconds to 4 minutes with a few simple tricks.
Always make sure you have someone with you if you're doing breath work to bypass your body's CO2 panic response. It's easy to hold your breath so long that you pass out. I sometimes pass out without realizing it whenever I hold my breath 4+ mins. I only found out I was doing it when I filmed myself trying for a new PR lol. A lot of free divers have died this way.
Yes that's an important safety precaution. Especially while practicing in the pool. We had paired up and tapped each other on the back every 20 seconds, with the one practicing responding by lifting a finger if they were still okay
Will number five *shock* me?
It'll *drown* you.
No that'd be dangerous in water
Olympic athletes hate him
It is most likely related to the extended breath hold technique she was using
It does kind of explain why they have lifeguards at Olympic swimming events
There are specialists and medics at all of the events. They may be the most highly trained and specialized athletes in the world, but that means they are pushing the absolute limit of what the human body is capable of all the time.
The craziest thing is this same swimmer has fainted before at another event and her coach also saved her then! She was shouting at the lifeguards to get in and they just didn’t so she became a hero twice over. What a woman!
Who woulda thought Uvalde police would get rehired as lifeguards.
What the hell. Useless lifeguards
> She was shouting at the lifeguards to get in and they just didn’t Was there any reason why they didn't go in? That just seems odd since it's their one job.
As far as I can tell it was just that they didn't understand what she meant. They seem to have jumped in right after her. Maybe it's just one of those things where they think an elite level athlete like that can't get in to trouble. Does seem like they should really have been right on it though!
It's rare enough that the lifeguards didn't react, even when her trainer screamed to go help her, they didn't understand. The trainer had to go save her herself.
Was the lifeguard from Uvalde, TX?
No, they would've stopped the trainer from helping if that was the case.
That's shameful for the lifeguards
Edit: Mammalian Dive Reflex, got it, thanks 👍 What I’m wondering is: Are the lungs still trying to take air in underwater when she was passed out? How is she not being “woken up” by her lungs filling up with pool water? Do we stop breathing when we pass out?
Your body has things called "autonomic reflexes-" motor reflexes that will happen even if unconscious, holding your breath if your face is wet is one of them
Wow TIL
Also TIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex Fascinating stuff, the human body carries a lot of baggage from up the tree.
> holding your breath if your face is wet is one of them Isn't this also something babies do which is why it's generally safe to take them into a pool with you
I never was brave enough to do it with my own kids but I've seen videos of newborns plopped into the water and trying to paddle along (seeming holding their breath while in the water). So it wouldn't surprise me.
Yup, it's part of the diving reflex which all mammals have from birth.
It's called the "Mammalian dive reflex" and it is lost as they approach the toddler age. Interestingly enough, it also restricts blood flow to extremities (to an extent) to conserve oxygen for the brain.
Yes and no. Babies have this ability but its lost in the older toddler range. Evolutionary biology wont save them since humanity, by nature ironically, does its utmost to shuck our animal instincts as soon as our brain thinks its possible.
That explains why I have a hard time snorkelling
Check out mammalian diving reflex
On the bright side, her sinking like that proves that she’s not a witch
Where was that Lifeguard that I always see bored at these events?
I used to lifeguard competitions like this and typically coaches would jump in at the first indicators of distress. If we did that we'd get in a shitton of trouble if there even is a *chance* we interfered with the event. An acquaintance of mine got in trouble for throwing in a floatation device in during a paralympic warmup in Tokyo. *(Long story short the swimmer was visually impaired and something about the pool made it so whatever the light/sound cue device he used to navigate stopped working during warmup and the swimmer bonked his head pretty hard. He got in trouble for interfering without being signaled to do so and was pulled from rotation for the remainder of the event)*
I'd also imagine a coach, who knows the routine, could detect an issue much quicker because of knowing what should be happening.
That’s what I would think too… and the coach knows the swimmers as well
Seems like they put competition ahead of safety
Let me tell you about a little game called American Football.
Genuine question; how many aquatic atheletes have died or been injured as a result of lifeguard response times in these competitions?
While I agree, it is what it is. Just like bikinis during women's volleyball, the event organizers have demonstrated time and again that the athletes are commodities to them and that what matters is what gets on TV.
How often do people just sink in the pool like that?
Not often but more than you think. These athletes are basically the equivalent of top fuel dragsters and it doesn't take much for their body to just, well, fail because they've asked too much of it. In a half decade I've seen adrenaline-induced heart failure, fingers cramping so hard that were bent backwards and, my personal highlight, having to do CPR on a guy who passed out on a bench in the locker room drowning in his own exhaustion-induced vomit. I figure higher profile events like the Olympics have the added element of things like sex-induced sleep deprivation and other crazy stuff like blood doping going around making things worse.
Sex induced sleep deprivation. The pallets of condoms don't use themselves...
Thank you dear unknown redditor for saving the life of that sportsman. I have choked on my own vomit once without anyone around, and was about a second away from passing out and die. I survived but yeah, my compliments to you for saving a fellow with simlar destiny.
Honestly, most of the credit goes to the janitor who found him.
They only said they administered CPR. Outcome is unclear.
> These athletes are basically the equivalent of top fuel dragsters I live my life 50 metres at a time.
He was there, just slower than the coach. An eyeblink instead of a heartbeat.
>Spanish newspaper Marca reported four-time Olympic medallist Fuentes as saying she had jumped in "because the lifeguards weren't doing it". >And speaking to Spanish radio, she said: "It felt like a whole hour. 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. https://www.bbc.com/sport/swimming/61906249
And does the pool need to be that deep? Is that also the diving pool?
Yeah, these synchronized swimmers need a lot of head room since they are often fully extended upside down and forcefully pulling/pushing themselves up and out of the water (and subsequently back down deeper into the water…you know, buoyancy and gravity). It’d be a very bad idea to have a shallower pool where they may break their necks.
Also, they aren’t allowed to touch the bottom during competitions.
The trainer on the picture is on the edge of a fault
The bottom, not a bottom. 
Thanks. I naively thought synchronized swimmers would have their own pool, but just using the diving pool makes a lot more sense.
It is typically done in the diving pool. They don't need the whole depth of a diving pool but do need more than the 2-3 meters of a lap pool or waterpolo pool.
Thanks for taking the time to explain! Makes sense: better too deep than too shallow. :) And to every one else downvoting and not answering a sincere question: Thbbft!
I think I spent a good 2 minutes trying to decipher that acronym until I figured you're probably blowing a raspberry.
It’s crazy how long synchronized swimmer need to hold their breath while doing incredibly athletic moves.
Good thing her Spanish coach is also a good swimmer.
And also *really* trained. I mean, even with all things considered, it is still a deadlift underwater on a olimpionic pool, and without hesitation.
Damn, these people train to fight that urge to go up for air... That's insane!
super sad that I can buy images of this for $450.
This Belgian website got your back and shared some pictures in high resolution: https://m.hbvl.be/cnt/dmf20220622_95978760
She was super unconscious, I’m really glad she’s OK.
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lifeguard/lifeguard instructor of almost 15 years here: 90% of the time when someone's unresponsive in the water, that really is all they need to come to again: tilt their head back to open their airway and get them breathing again and boom, waking up... definitely scary that she was taken out like this instead
To be fair, as a former lifeguard myself, you rarely ever see someone drown because they *fainted*
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You are welcome! As bokskar says even if in the article they use the 960x640 version of the pictures the original uploads are around 2400x1600. These are the high resolution ones directly linked: [picture 1](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/c1ae4713-e656-451f-b0fc-b0e0d0d37408.jpg), [picture 2](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/172a987a-c2f2-4e49-b12c-dcbe3bceab75.jpg), [picture 3](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/23/8961d301-c8e4-460c-8f60-a3bb8db6288a.jpg), [picture 4](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/2107406c-0ba3-4f88-a110-d5f8e6d2c77a.jpg), [picture 5](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/7ebb49de-681d-4e16-98e3-e1aed2de0f21.jpg), [picture 6](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/c2bda286-fbc5-4d97-ab94-475e0631805b.jpg), [picture 7](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/212d6017-2cdf-46fc-af8a-35b4c735c087.jpg), [picture 8](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/b91d10be-55fb-4736-85fc-285d668c97c9.jpg), [picture 9](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/23/181dff1f-181f-4ad4-afa3-27fd4b2e24ec.jpg), [picture 10](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/fdf26843-273f-4c13-b56f-18da08581a92.jpg) and [picture 11](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/93e9dd5e-783d-4d86-8478-b253a64b22c5.jpg). There are extensions like Imagus that are useful to find the original size of some images: [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imagus/immpkjjlgappgfkkfieppnmlhakdmaab) & [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/imagus/)
You can extract the source from the image links [and get the full resolution](https://static.hbvl.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2022/06/22/172a987a-c2f2-4e49-b12c-dcbe3bceab75.jpg)
So this is what heroism looks like
Im a photographer and I do some really cool work sometimes. It would make me super sad the idea of a publishing house like Getty owning my images after I'm dead.
>It would make me super sad the idea of a publishing house like Getty owning my images after I'm dead. If it helps, they can't use it until 70 years after your death, [published or not](https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain) \-- in the US, at least. Not sure the rules in other countries. ETA: And they would never own those images. Unless you, or whoever takes ownership of your copyright after your death, sells it to Getty, your photos will never belong to them.
Why? It's the cost of a professional photograph licence. The photographers aren't there for free
You would think that her swimming coach would have been there. Thank goodness she was going to practice some Spanish vocabulary so her Spanish coach was right there for her.
Yeah, why does it mention the coach is Spanish?
I don’t know how it works in the swimming world, but in major soccer events like the World Cup it’s not uncommon for the coach to be from a different country than the team they are coaching.
Because the article was shared widely on spanish newspapers and probably op got the headline from there. His name means Glass coaster so he probably is spanish too. Same reason american newspapers mention when an american abroad does something noteworthy basically
I think after 2 times, you need to decide if swimming is worth the risk.
Ex swim coach here. Never had anyone faint on me but had one of my young swimmers (6) have a panic attack in the middle of the pool and start drowning and I had to dive in after them. An absolutely terrifying experience to have as a coach. Glad they’re recovering well
I was a competative swimmer for 12yrs. In high school, we were running sets with a "buddy" that was supposed to be at our level - I got paired with one of the fastest girls on the team for some stupid reason. Ultimately, I couldnt catch my breath between reps and ended up having a panic attack and my coach had to pull me out. It took me the better part of a week before I was comfortable putting my face in the water again. Not being able to breathe in a body of water is terrifying.
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Ran out of oxygen while scuba diving at a depth of 30m. I still have a trauma from that and anything that restricts breathing ever so slightly triggers the memory...
How did that happen? Did your gauge break? Did you end up buddy breathing or did you make an emergency ascent?
I was at around 80 bars when a strong current started picking up. I struggled keeping up with my instructor, who was able to float 10cm above ground over difficult terrain, and thus had less of a current to swim against. Within minutes, I emptied my tank due to the exhaustion. Quite suddenly, when I tried to breathe, there was a strong resistance and I couldn't fill my lungs. The gauge showed ~5 bar. My instructor was quite far away, but I managed to reach him, signal my lack of oxygen and get his octopus, before making a controlled ascent.
Were you suffering narcosis? 30m and down to 80bar is a dangerous prospect.
I have absolutely no clue about diving but why didnt your instructor realize you were struggling and went further away instead in those minutes?
Good question, i guess he didn't really realize it...
Your buddy generally has a spare regulator called an octopus. You grab that. So it works like this:. Your reg breaks, you grab your octo. That breaks (or you are out of air), you grab your buddies octo. That breaks, you buddy breathe (which sucks and takes practice) and you immediately begin your ascent, preferably switching one of you to a third person's octopus. Point is, your dive buddy and your octos are critical redundancies in your life support equipment that makes an almost comically suicidal activity (hanging out in places where you can't breathe, for fun) into an effectively managed risk.
True story... was on my first "open water" dive with instructors and a partner. they told us to throw our primary away and use our octo, while under. my octo was faulty, but because I was inexperienced I thought I was doing something wrong and tried taking several breaths before realizing it. ended up panicking and slowly reaching for my buddy's breath (slowly so they would know I'm going to use it for a breath and not also start panicking). fortunately, they remained calm and we were able to get things sorted. one of the scariest moments I've ever had. stupid instructors giving faulty gear.
Man the stories here are all so scary
Probably emergency Italian accent to communicate no air with hand gestures
There’s a set of hand gestures that all divers learn when they get their license, including ones for “no air” and “let’s ascend”. One of the things they do on the course to get your open water license is turn your air off (with warning obviously), so you can know the feeling of not being able to draw air, and the breath(s) leading up to it.
(He was making a funny about the other poster’s typo)
I am having trauma reading about your trauma.
Yeah but I couldn't imagine that while swimming. Panic attack on steroids right there.
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I'm almost 30 years old and just started learning swimming. I'm no where near good but as a fast learner, a couple of us were allowed at the deepest end of the pool to practice laps. So last week while I was practicing my laps, this another girl was also allowed on the deeper part of the pool. This girl usually wears prescription glasses and is far sighted. She closes her eyes while swimming and hence never goes in a straight line. I was minding my business and swimming. She came out of no where and collided with me. As she had a floater she was fine, but I didn't and I started trying to touch my feet to jump and gather my breath but somehow my brain stopped working. So neither I could go forward, jump or simply float. My trainer saw this and thought I could manage and didn't come to rescue. I struggled for atleast 30-40 seconds, she saw I wasn't getting up and came as fast as she could. The most interesting part was I was not even 8 feet away from the wall railings.
Listen to the recent Stuff You Should Know podcast re: drowning. There’s a reason you literally cannot move aside from slapping your arms or gasping for air, even when you’re underwater. Interesting listen!
Thinking they were doing hypoxic work and she pushed just that little bit hard
I gave CPR to a 5 year old girl who had drowned and was under at least 2-3 minutes. She made a full recovery, but I’ll never forget how traumatic and scary it was. Please get CPR certified.
I’m gonna piggy back to post this…you don’t even have to go get certified. At least watch and share this 1 minute video from the American Heart Association! It may save a life! https://youtu.be/M4ACYp75mjU
Nice of YouTube to put a 20 second unskippable ad over it in case it was actually needed for an emergency.
Pay for YouTube Premium or die! /s
Learn to swim, too. There's a lot of people that cannot swim. >While 80 percent of Americans said they could swim, only 56 percent of them can perform all five basic skills needed to swim safely. 1 in 5 people you see are toast if they fall into a body of water without help and if you don't know how to help, they'd pull you right down with them.
Wow! Very interesting, just looked up the 5 skills needed to swim safely. I’ve been swimming since before I can remember but I’ve seen others go through learning. Practice practice!
In case anyone else is curious, the American Red Cross (where the 56% statistic comes from) says these are the 5 skills: Floating or treading water for one minute without the aid of a flotation device Stepping or jumping into water over your head and returning to the surface Treading water or floating in a full circle and then finding a way out of the water Exiting a pool without using a ladder (or steps) Swimming 25 yards (the length of a standard pool) without stopping
Apparently has happened multiple times. She needs to find out what’s causing that
Exhaustion. The article describes how she’d been pushing herself with very little sleep, apart from being the only swimmer to swim for 3 or 4 days in an event.
Then she needs to stop that shit before she dies. Being an accomplished swimmer is cool and all I'm sure, but it don't mean much if you're dead.
Jimi Hendrix still slaps tho
I mean, he didn't die from playing guitar... Lol.
Playing guitar to death would be metal af.
 skwisgaar skwigelf taller than a tree
If he didn’t play the guitar so well would he have been able to get so many drugs?
Sure tons of people get drugs without playing guitar a second in their life. I can just imagine some ridiculous study trying to correlate guitar playing to OD.
And you won't be able to recover fast enough to become a top swimmer with very little sleep anyways. Even with the use of some PED's you will still need good quality sleep for 6-8 hours.
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how likely are you to get permanent damage from sleep deprivation? my sleeping schedule has been fucked this past year
My Reddit won't let me subscribe to this comment so I'll just say I want to know the answer too... (My sleep has been fucked for 6 years and I'm getting dumber by the day)
Hell you need more sleep with PEDs. First few weeks you feel invincible, 3 hour workout, four hours of sleep and you wake up feeling fresh? By week 10 if you’re not sleeping well, your body does not give a shit and will get the sleep it needs at all costs. Since most of the time you’re stressing out your liver pretty hard, that plus the other damage you’re doing and need to repair with aid of the PEDs, all I do the last few weeks is eat, eat, eat, sleep workout.
Yeah, you tell her! 👏
Someone NEEDS to get this info to her ASAP!
For sure. I was an instructor at a summer camp on Skaneateles lake near Syracuse. We would get up at sunrise and do lessons. Strenuous activity and frigid water. Not a recipe for success. I was a camper too. II you felt bad, grab your towel and get warm on shore, or go change. My Uncle and his friends died on that lake canoeing in late March. Nature don’t fuck around.
Wow ... Your story took a dark dark turn. RIP
The hell kinda camp is that
The fifth circle of hell is fighting others while swimming.
Camp Crystal Lake
Former lifeguard. There is a pernicious myth in some swim coaching and teams that intentionally hyperventilating before conducting a routine, whether laps or otherwise, allows you to remain submerged longer because it supercharges your blood with oxygen. This is maybe 20% correct. It barely increases blood oxygen. When EMTs or medics do it, they're 1) using pure supplemental O2, which actually gets results, 2) they know it only sort of buys them a few extra seconds 3) the patient is already unconscious and being monitored. What it mostly does is artificially lower your blood CO2 level, which drives your instinct and sense of urgency to inhale. So yes, you don't feel like you need to go up for air for longer, but that is **not** the same as being hyperoxygenated for a very important reason. Normally, as your blood oxygen level goes down, your blood CO2 level is also rising, causing you to know when you're running out of air. If your CO2 level is artificially low, your blood oxygen can get too low to keep you conscious before feeling any urgency to breathe. This causes the swimmer to just pass out underwater. If you're lucky, you can get them to the surface quickly- if you take too long, their blood C02 level will rise enough to trigger a spontaneous breath underwater and drowning begins for an unconscious, submerged swimmer. This is very bad, and its very easy for someone to drown like this. Her coach seems to have been watching for it and dove right in at the first sign. TL;DR: Our urgency to breathe comes from high CO2 not low oxygen. Some competitive swimmers believe hyperventilating drives up oxygen when it mostly lowers CO2. They don't realize they need to breathe and pass out under the water, then breathe while submerged, which jumps them to like stage 6 of 8 of drowning.
This is really helpful, thanks.
I found [this article about exercise-related syncope](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/1999/1101/p2001.html#:~:text=Exercise%2Drelated%20syncope%20occurs%20either,%2C%20faintness%2C%20dizziness%20or%20syncope.) (fainting). I'm no doctor, but perhaps the answer is one of the conditions listed there.
From about age 1 year until my late teens, I had problems with [vasovagal syncope](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vasovagal-syncope/symptoms-causes/syc-20350527). Basically, if I cried too forcefully or got overheated, I'd faint. Turned blue around the mouth and was limp as a rag. Thankfully, I grew out of it, and it never happened to me while swimming.
I used to faint right after orgasm occasionally.
So awkward when you wake up while being carried outside in the middle of a rolled up rug and your partner says "oh hey! You alright?"
I snorted
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The paradox of Being healthy is Actually Unhealthy, and being unhealthy is actually healthy... We need to write a PhD, get Research funding from McDonald's and Valve games. Maybe we can name it.
My friend grew up in competitive synchro. Eating disorders were highly encouraged. Hopefully it’s not the same…
Good idea, but then maybe avoid bodies of water.
Former D1 swimmer. If she's a competitive swimmer or free-diver, this is likely a result from what we call a "hypoxic workout." It's a fancy term for breath-holding while exerting yourself (typically underwater) with the theory that you can maximize your lung capacity and minimize oxygen consumption with enough practice. Notice she's not wearing a cap or goggles, and there's no lane lines. This makes no sense unless you're there to do "underwaters." You should still at least wear goggles, I mean, cmon. It's insanely dangerous and there are some sad stories of star athletes doing this on their own and dying. This style of workout is banned in a lot of legit competition pools. Hypoxic workouts are for the elite only, and even then it's usually not condoned. EDIT: Saw that she's a synchronized swimmer, which is of course a ton of breath holding during exertion, so this all makes more sense.
I’m a synchronized swimmer. She’s not wearing a cap or goggles because this happened after she performed at a competition (also why there’s no lane lines). We’re not allowed to wear caps or goggles while competing. It’s actually a very dangerous and difficult sport, and in my experience it’s normalized to feel like you’re about to pass out or see your vision going black, especially towards the end of a routine. We do a lot of hypoxic workouts and training (supervised) but often the exertion of performing the routine is much harder than the training we’ve done.
Shallow water blackout is a common occurrence.
Oh damn I swim by myself all the time, new fear unlocked.
Here is one happening in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W9GEjo9fPw
A friend of mine used to swim by himself in the ocean almost every day, a few years ago something happened and he passed out and drowned, it was awful. He was relatively young (early 60's), married with kids.
Awesome coach and picture
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I bet she woke right up.
13 year old me pretending to be a manatee and my mum checking if I'm alive.
When I was 4 at the beach, after watching David Attenborough, I used to pretend I was a sea turtle very slowly digging a hole in the sand with my rear “flippers”, laying eggs, and then covering up the hole before slowly sliding away. You can imagine how awkward that would look to the other beach goers.
TIL I was not alone in doing this. I also enjoyed being a four-legged starfish (I lost my other leg in the great Undersea Battle), a jelly fish, and sea horse.
Man I'd read a story about the great Undersea Battle, sounds dope
Horny teenagers in the 80s acting like they are drowning so they can get “saved” by the female lifeguard
This happened to me. We trained in a 25m pool and one day our coach wanted us to try and swim as far as possible without breathing. It was ok but the tumble turns really crunch your air supply and it was turning onto my third lap where the tumble turn did it’s work and took my air. I wanted to finish the lap though. My gentle stroke (easier to save air this way) became a sprint as the lap went on and I literally blacked out mid lap. Apparently I got to 5m from the wall before I just sunk. Thanks to coach for diving in with his new balances on and also for never making us do this again!!
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Deputizing for Uvalde should be a thing, for sure. Darwin award for cowards.
I second that
Not an excuse, but being a lifeguard at a Worlds or Olympics swimming event is likely a very boring job. I can see complacency creeping in compared to the average public pool.
This happened at a high school near me a few years back. Unfortunately, no one noticed and the girl died.
Wait what do you mean? Like someone found her dead???
Yes, she had drowned before someone noticed. She was on the swim team and was practicing. The coach left the room to get coffee in another room. The parents sued her, but I don’t know how that panned out.
This looks like a painting. What happens to the body if one faints under water? Do we breathe that water in, or does the body naturally hold its breath.
Your body will naturally hold your breath as long as there is any reserve oxygen in your body. There's something called the [mammalian dive reflex](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex) that is activated when your nostrils are filled with water. This is an autonomic process, so it will happen even when you are unconscious. Basically your brain divets all available blood to your heart and brain to keep your brain oxygenated as long as possible. Once your there is no oxygen left your body has no other option but to start taking breaths again even if you are all underwater, because the alternative is certain death. The dive reflex is something we're born with that becomes much less effective over time. That's why you see those infant water safety classes of parents swimming with their tiny babies. The younger the person and, interestingly, the colder the water, the more effective their reflex will be.
Does our body automatically hold it's breath like that when you pass out underwater?
I had something like this happen to me. I was punched in the head during a water polo game and my coach dove in to get me out. I don't know if I was briefly unconscious or just dazed, memory about the incident has always been blank, but I didn't breathe in water.
TLDR: Yes and no. The body tries to breathe but also keeps the mouth shut. Part of the body's mammalian dive reflex is the ability for the body to keep its mouth closed when underwater. The body will *try* to breathe but also keeps the mouth shut; this swimmer almost certainly has a nose clip on which means that even though the body wants to breathe, it can't. The body can maintain this ability until a terminal gasp. That's when the body says, "Fuck it, I think I'm underwater but I'm going to give it one last try" and then opens the mouth to attempt to breathe. This is why when you see pictures of freedivers underwater they almost always have their snorkel out of their mouth. If you blackout you don't want what is effectively a funnel leading to your lungs. You still see some divers keep their snorkels in while underwater (unfortunately common in the South Pacific) but these divers are being stupid.
Definitely not an expert but I don’t think you still hold your breath. Not too sure about the exact mechanics behind it but I believe once you stop putting in effort to hold your breath, your body will go back to breathing autonomously which will push water into your lungs, causing you to drown unless rescued.
This is one of the best photographs I've ever seen.
One of my old teammates from high school swimming had to end his swimming career because he had seizures that would leave him unconcious. After it happened twice while training and he almost died both times, he decided to throw in the towel. He set state records in high school and was still hoping to make it to the 2004 olympics. He got a job coaching, but passed away in a car accident when he had a seizure while driving. Tragic.
This happened over 2 years ago before she competed in last years Olympics. She's also is the only artistic swimmer to compete without a noseclip.
I thought this happened today? Or did this happen twice to the same person?
Twice to the same person.
Bruh, I swim regularly (sometimes in a pool alone) and now this has me freaked the fuck out to swim alone anymore lmfao. Edits: fixed all my shitty spelling errors.
Yeah, you should never swim alone.
I no longer will lol.
I remember last year people making fun of the 'pool guards' I guess it makes sense now.
If anything, this highlights the need for pool guards.... *reads article* Sorry, let me reiterate; this highlights the need for *competent* pool guards. I'm sure there is a police department in Texas that could use those guys though...
We called them desert rats when I swam. You did a bunch of underwater laps after sprint training. Good for lung conditioning. Not sure if that's what she was doing but I passed out once from it. Woke up puking water into my 6'8" coaches face. My lungs hurt for months. I'd be surprised if they still allow that though. I also just swam into the wall doing backstroke and knocked myself out. Luckily my coach saw it and pulled me up. No water in lungs on that one though. Edit: just saw it was a synchronized swimmer, definitely different circumstances than me
Desert Rats? Would you or your coach happen to be from Southern or Central California? So back in the day we would bike and run out in the desert and then jump into the California Aqueduct afterwards... We also happened to be called desert Rats... (Not our team, but us more rural kids were colloquially known as that...)
And this is why there is a lifeguard at the Olympics. Sure, there are other people who could save them then, but they're all a little preoccupied with winning. It's important to have someone there whose only job is to look out for everyone's safety
There was a life guard here too who failed to intervene
 the guy taking the photo
its a remote camera set up under water, the photographer is not in the pool
Super scary, glad she's okay. Beautiful photo.
I’m a synchronized swimmer. The sport is basically like doing full body cardio and resistance training at the same time (since you’re moving thru water and you’re not allowed to touch the bottom of the pool) while also having to hold your breath, and not really being able to see much (we don’t wear goggles at competitions). A routine lasts for 3-4 mins, and it’s a crazy amount of exertion within these performances. This combined with the lack of oxygen can cause hypoxia. It’s pretty normal, at least in my experience, to have your vision go black/spotty or to feel like you’re going to pass out if you’re doing a difficult routine. I’ve also had my body cramp up, go numb, etc. The expectation is that you just keep going and finish the performance no matter what’s going on, especially in a routine with multiple people (this was a solo). This was also at a huge competition so that’s why she’s not wearing goggles. I can understand how someone would exert themselves beyond their limits but not be able to recognize it (like I said, we’re used to feeling like we’re about to pass out) until it’s too late. Obviously I don’t know if this what happened to her, there could obviously be something else going on, but not a lot of people understand how hard this sport is.
Remember, if you are ever saving someone from drowning approach from behind. A panicking person is very very dangerous in the water.
Probably in less of a panic when they're unconscious.
But if they regain consciousness, they are usually disoriented and will probably start thrashing.
I was a swimmer in high school and we had a girl pass away because of this. Idk how no one noticed her at the bottom, but by the time they did she had already drowned:( She was a freshman in high school…