Behind the U.S. artistic swimming team, who medaled for the first time since 2004, is Andrea Fuentes.
Fuentes is more than the team’s coach. She’s the architect, choreographer and heart behind the now silver medal-winning group.
She may have been able to lead the team to the podium largely because she’s been there before. The former artistic swimmer herself won four medals for her native country of Spain.
“I always think that for me this is the craziest sport ever. If you think about it, it's not made for humans,” Fuentes said. “We are upside down in an environment that we cannot breathe, that it's not solid. On top of it, without goggles we cannot see when we compete.”
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But her love and passion, which was instilled in her when she caught the artistic swimming bug while watching the sport during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, have led her to excel as an athlete and now as a coach.
“Andrea has had a huge impact on the program and on the team,” Anita Alvarez, a member of the U.S. artistic swimming team, said. “She also is just very open-minded and just a student of life.”
When Fuentes began coaching the U.S. in 2018, she knew she had to pull Team USA from the bottom after American swimmers had failed to qualify for the Olympics since 2008.
“They were so good. Why? What happened?” asked Fuentes, who joined Team USA after retiring from her competitions. “I felt I could give back, but one time (Olympians) made me dream, so I wanted to make others dream.
Watching her coach in many ways is watching her perform as she moves to the rhythm expressively with precision and improvisation. She creates music by composing a playlist on her poolside computer.
“I really like to work with music and do the cards and do unique pieces that you can actually not find anywhere else,” she said. “I don't play the instrument. I just create music digitally from different pieces, like a remix.”
Fuentes will soon be reunited with her husband and their two children when she returns home to Los Angeles following the Paris Olympics closing ceremony.
