The scenes get under your skin. After her free program at the swimming world championships, synchronized swimmer Anita Alvarez suddenly fell unconscious. She sinks helplessly to the ground. Her trainer pulls the American out of the water with another helper. The 25-year-old escaped with a fright. The question remains: how do such dangerous short-term knockouts occur in athletes? A sports medicine doctor explains.
A short-term loss of consciousness in competitive sports is not that rare, explains Hans-Georg Predel, professor and sports physician at the German Sport University in Cologne, in the RTL interview. The effect is also known, for example, from rowers or other disciplines.
What exactly happens in the body when you lose consciousness? “During the freestyle, the body is under extreme, high-intensity tension. After the freestyle, there is a sudden complete overthrow of the nervous system,” explains Predel. From high activity it now goes to inactivity. “The blood pressure drops, the blood supply to the brain stops. In some people, this can lead to a brief loss of consciousness.”
There was an incident during the Olympic qualification a year ago
Just like with Anita Alvarez on Wednesday in the Budapest basin. After the incident, the coaches said it wasn’t the first time she had passed out during sport and blamed the reaction on the stress.
That this played a role “may be,” says Predel. “But first and foremost it was the high-intensity mix of physical and mental exertion during the competition, independent of psychological stressors that take place beforehand.”
He definitely sees an alarm signal in the body’s reaction if this occurs more frequently. “You then have to consider whether the sport is suitable in the long run. It can happen again and again.” This can be “extremely dangerous” in water. “In the worst case, she would have drowned,” said Predel. “This swimmer certainly always needs a certain amount of care at the edge of the pool, which intervenes courageously.”
German synchronized swimmers shocked
Alvarez, sinking lifeless in the water, worried the spectators on site and also the competitors. The German synchronized swimmers Marlene Bojer and Michelle Zimmer were “shocked” by the news. “You don’t wish that on anyone. It’s not nice to notice when someone faints in the water,” says Bojer in an RTL interview. It was only after they saw Alvarez at the training pool some time later and realized that she was doing well that both of them felt relief.
Basically, such incidents are not unknown in their discipline. “In our sport, you push your physical limits. You train and prepare for it,” says Zimmer. Her colleague Bojer also reports that she had her own fainting spell during training.
“It was about a maximum number of meters that you should cover. I thought: I can still do it, but then I couldn’t anymore,” she describes the scene. Two people jumped right in. “I didn’t even realize it myself. Even when I showed up. I was fine after that too.”
Zimmer emphasizes: “It looks more dramatic in the water than on land. Because you are almost alone and sink to the bottom. Basically, it also happens in other sports.”
Both Bojer and Alvarez were saved – thanks to quick-thinking coaches. However, after her rescue operation, the Spanish coach Fuentes complained that the rescue workers in Budapest initially only “glanced”. Then she jumped in herself and helped her protégé.
Alvarez, meanwhile, is doing well again. The vital signs are all in the normal range, the team said. She is even considering starting the team competition on Friday.