FOR THE RECORD: 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES: silver (duet), bronze (team); 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: silver (duet, team); 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES: diploma, 4th (team); 2011 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (solo free event), bronze (solo tech, duet free, duet tech, team free, team tech); 2009 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: gold (combo), silver (duet free, duet tech, team free, team tech); 2007 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (team free), bronze (team tech); 2005 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: bronze (team combo); 2003 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: silver (combo), 4th (team); 2001 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: 5th place (team).
Born in Tarragona, Spain, she had her first “real” contact with artistic swimming at age nine when future Spanish National Team coach, Anna Tarrés, was visiting local schools to recruit athletes for her club, C N Kallípolis, Barcelona.
Synchronized swimming was not popular in Spain at the time, but after watching the video Tarrés showed to her class, Andrea Fuentes was immediately wowed. At first, it was only two to three hours a week after school, but synchro quickly became more prominent in her life. By the age of 13, Fuentes was competing on the Junior National Team under coach Bet Fernández. And in 1999 when Fuentes was sixteen years old, Tarrés called her up to the Senior National Team.
At the time, the Spanish team was ranked tenth in the world. Using a series of innovative new lifts, throws, and hybrids, they slowly rose to the World Championship podium, tying for silver in the new event of the team free combination in 2003 and fourth in team. The next year, Spain took fourth in team again at the Olympic Games in Athens.
Following the 2005 World Championships, Andrea was tapped as a potential duet partner for then Spanish star Gemma Mengual, seven years her senior. She knew she would have to work harder than ever, so she bought a video camera and would watch all the videos late into the night to find out what she needed to do to improve. It paid off. At the World Cup in 2006 she took silver in duet with Mengual, swimming the technical routine.
Andrea had her most successful Olympic Games in Beijing, winning the silver medal in both duet and team, coming within a single point of the gold. In 2009 at the Roma World Championships, she swam away with one gold and four silver medals.
With Mengual taking a break, Andrea began training with a new partner, Ona Carbonell and with her, won her third Olympic silver medal in London, 2012, in duet along with a bronze in team.
Under Andrea’s 15+ years with Tarrés and Fernández, Spain was recognized by the entire synchro community as revolutionary and as an innovative, risk-taking team that always came up with unique choreography, gravity-defying acrobatics, and amazing costumes.
After her retirement as an athlete in 2013, Andrea married Spanish Olympic gymnast Victor Cano. Together, the pair began giving private lessons, coaching, and conducting clinics around the world.
In 2018, Andrea was asked to lead USA Artistic Swimming from a ranking of 12th in the world back to the Olympic podium. In 2024, Andrea guided the US team to the silver medal in Paris, returning the USA to the podium for the first time in 20 years. After the Paris Games, she returned home to Spain with her husband and two children as Head Coach of the Spanish National Team.