"To be creative, you have to be brave"

Andrea Fuentes: The “Insanity” of an artistic swimming coach

Serious. Professional. Level-headed. These are some of the adjectives people typically hope to be associated with during their first weeks in a new job. Andrea Fuentes went for a different word: insane.

Team Spain’s “Insanity” free routine, which made its winning debut at the World Aquatics Artistic Swimming World Cup in April 2025, is still creating a buzz. And that’s just how Fuentes likes it.

“I don’t want to remain indifferent,” the mastermind behind the routine said. “What I really want is to create something truly special, something no one has ever seen before.”

At the start of “Insanity”, one of the swimmers tries to go their own way and is therefore deemed the “crazy one”. The other swimmers, who represent society, try to hold them back, but with time the crazy one’s fight inspires them and they start supporting them too.

“So if they want to call you crazy? Fine. Show them what crazy can do,” the voice of Serena Williams rings out over the routine’s music, a line taken from the tennis legend's 2019 “Dream Crazier” ad campaign.

That line might as well be directed straight at Fuentes who is watching the team from the sidelines. The “Insanity” routine is a good representation of her own approach to the sport – taking risks, innovating, creating programs that are memorable and, just as often, unsettling.

“The number one goal is to make sure this team will be remembered for life. Like our team from (London) 2012, everyone still remembers it,” Fuentes said, referencing Spain’s bronze-medal winning team from her last Olympic appearance and their now iconic “El Oceano” (The Ocean) routine.

While there are many daring programs in artistic swimming, “Insanity” stands out on its own. Everything from the storyline to the unexpected details, such as scratching noises and voices of the team’s athletes as well as Fuentes’ daughter shouting variations of “crazy” in different languages, seem to challenge the audience members to embrace the strange, the unusual, the insane.

For Fuentes, being so creative is a risk. But one that is well worth the extra effort.

“I always say, ‘If you want to do something that’s never been done before and you give up on the third day, how is something so difficult going to work out?’,” she said. “You have to be patient, especially with acrobatics, because we’ve developed so many new ones. If you give up after the first week, you will never succeed. So, patience, courage, and let your mind fly.”

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