(CNN)Photos aredramatic and shockingand why they are seen all over the world is.
Anita Alvarez is unconscious at the bottom of her pool after completing her routine at the FINA World Championships. Her knees are touching the tiles, her arms are loose and her eyes are closed. Later, we find out that she wasn't breathing.
Coach Andrea Fuentes reacts like a lightning bolt if the swimmer's feet look paler than usual and he doesn't notice alertness, and jumps in to save the athlete. What if I didn't? When she saw her sinking instead of the American standing up to breathe.
Perhaps the most amazing thing for those who have never seen artistic swimming, or who only see it every four years at the Olympics, is what sports people do to Alvarez in Budapest. I heard you talk about what happened. Risks associated with sports.
Indeed, this was the second time Fuentes rescued Alvarez. Last year she jumped into the pool during an Olympic qualifying event and took her 25-year-old child to a safe place.
Fentes told CNN this week that the swimmer regularly holds his breath for a long time to improve her lung capacity, but these practices go against her medical advice. Said he didn't.
Former Spanish artistic swimmer Hema Mengal, a three-time Olympic athlete, feels a tingling sensation on her face, almost faints in her pool and is afraid of what will happen. I explained that I abandoned the routine.
"It's a very tough sport. You've always reached the limit. When I compete, I'm always scared to go there," she told Atresmedia in Spain. rice field.
And that's essentially what elite sports are. It's about pushing the limits physically and mentally. Training, competitions, daily, yearly, because it's a place where bars are set up for all sports.
Synchronized swimming swimmers look calm and dance balletically underwater. They are calm, smiling and fascinating the crowd. There's a lot of music, make-up, and even sequins.
It all looks easy, so that good people always look that way. That does not mean that there is no pain before, during, or after.
"I was an athlete for the rest of my life. I spent 20 years in the pool. Sometimes there are few prices that I can afford to pay," Fentes told CNN.
"And in every sport, if you know a high-performance athlete, it's part of beauty. You grow beyond the limits."
In sports, There is no greatness without sacrifice. There is nothing very, very good without sacrifice. Elite athletes are the best in their industry and not everything can be the best ever, but they are all the best in the world in their work,you must definitely ownCharacteristics to be good. Talent, yes, certainly single-minded, but also capable of pushing himself and living an extreme life-and it's difficult.
They miss parties, don't dawn, and ruin family holidays. All this is what British Cycling in the golden heyday of the last decade describes as a "small profit".
This is a small improvement, improving everything by 1% and significantly improving overall performance. If the difference between success and failure is a fraction of a second or an inch, then all the little things are important.
For British Cycling, this teaches each rider the best way to wash their hands, reduces the chance of catching a cold, and allows each rider to choose the best pillows and mattresses. Meaning to be able to sleep at night.
It's your life when you always do a little extra, and to do so for your well-being, or even your life, make yourself such an extreme during the competition-or More properly, I don't know where the limits really are-at risk and perhaps easier for the layman to understand.
In a 2012 column of the Guardian of England, triathlete Lesley Paterson wrote:
Perhaps that's why athletes need to be safe. No sacrifice should come in order for those who achieve victory to take care of them.
"We've all seen images of some athletes not reaching the finish line and helping others reach the finish line," she said. rice field.
At the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Callum Hawkins of Scotland fell on a roadside barrier 2 km away from the end in the heat of the scorching east coast, hitting his head and then hitting his head in the men's marathon. I missed the gold medal.
Of course, there is also the story of the mythical Greek runner Pheidippides, the inspiration for modern marathons. Did he announce the Greek victory over the Persians and fatally collapse after running from the marathon to Athens? It depends on who you ask.
However, elite athletes tend to distinguish between risk and outcome. For Alex Honnold, widely recognized as the greatest rock climber of all time, the risk of climbing a bright red rock without a rope is low, and of course it can be fatal.
In 2017, Americans became the first to climb a 3,200-foot Monolith El Capitan without a rope. This is a skill known as free solo. He told CNN a few years ago that he tried this feat on "business as usual" and was based on decades of practice.
And that's the practice of spending thousands of hours completing crafts that the average person doesn't see. The final product is usually perfect performance and enhances the athlete's status as a different world. As a result, dramatic falls and rescues are headline news around the world.
What happened in Budapest this week reminded me that elite athletes are far from average, but also human.
