(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Westside Current and is reprinted with permission. If anyone had a daughter on the Palisades High School swim team between 2006 and 2009, there was one Venice swimmer that everyone talked about, Andi Murez. One PaliHi swimmer said, “no one can keep up with her.” For the Gondoliers, Murez won eight City Section individual championships and set four City records. In the Los Angeles City Finals in May 2008, she set the city’s record for the 100 freestyle. That year she also qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials. As a senior in the Spring of 2009, Murez won the 100-yard freestyle in a Los Angeles record time of 49.63. She also broke the 200-yard freestyle record, and holds the section records in the 100-yard butterfly and 100-yard backstroke. In 2016, In 2016, Murez was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Below is her story.)
Andrea Murez and Peter Paltchik carry their country’s flag in Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Andrea “Andi” Murez, a Venice native who swam at Venice High School and still holds records there, carried Israel’s flag at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
“I think what made it really obvious that this is such an honor was actually when we recently competed in the European championships and won the relay,” Murez said in a recent interview in a Tel Aviv University publication.
“To be on such a large stage like that at an international competition and be able to hear the Hatikvah and raise the Israeli flag … from that I have a lot of motivation.”
Murez made Aliyah from California in 2014 and is now representing Israel for the third time at the Olympics, participating in the 4×100 meter medley relay. She was the first woman in Israel to qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and also competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Competing in Paris holds a special significance for Murez, as her step-grandfather, a survivor of Nazi-occupied France and former French national team swimmer, adds a personal connection to her participation.
“My aunt messaged me the other day and reminded me that my step-grandfather is from France,” Murez said. “That adds a particularly special component to competing in Paris.”
Murez’s impressive achievements extend beyond the pool. She was pre-med at Stanford and later attended medical school at Tel Aviv University, graduating in the spring of 2023. Despite the rigorous demands of both her studies and athletic career, Murez has managed to excel in both.
Reflecting on her journey, Murez expressed gratitude for the opportunities that have shaped her. “Looking back at the career I’ve had so far … moving to Israel, making aliyah, learning a new language, becoming a part of a new culture and then competing and meeting swimmers and athletes while traveling around the world … it has just been an amazing opportunity and I’m so thankful,” she said.
“In medical school, the hours of training can’t just be about race day—that’s too much pressure. You’ve got to have perspective; you’ve got to enjoy the process day in and day out,” she said. “Dealing with pressure and staying motivated and not quitting during intense periods are skills I learned from swimming that I didn’t even know I had until I realized that others didn’t have those skills.”
Murez also emphasized the importance of mental health among athletes, an issue she plans to address in her future career. She is working with Stanford Lifestyle Psychiatry physicians to create a mental health survey for Olympic athletes, which she is translating into Hebrew to serve athletes in Israel.
“Getting an annual mental health check is just as important for Olympic athletes as the physical exam,” Murez said. “It’s important to have these conversations and raise awareness that elite athletes are human beings that have mental health struggles, too.”
Murez is set to compete on August 2, with her father, mother, and brother (also a former swimmer with the Gondoliers, and a swimmer for Yale) in Paris to cheer her on. “Very proud,” is an understatement her father recently said to the Current.