Andrea "Andi" Murez (Hebrew: אנדראה "אנדי" מוּרֶז; born 29 January 1992) is an Olympic swimmer.
[2][3] Born in the United States, she represents Israel internationally and competed for her country of birth in the past.
[6][7][8] Her paternal grandfather, Joe Murez, grew up in pre-WWII Austria on the Danube River, swam competitively for the Jewish Hakoah Vienna Sports Club in the 1930s, and related how during Hitler’s annexation of Austria, Nazis would gather around the pool to beat up Jewish swimmers.
[8][12][13] Her father's stepfather, Raymond Federman, who was also Jewish, was 14 years old when his parents hid him in a small stairway landing closet as Gestapo arrived at the family home in Nazi-occupied France.
[13] He later became a leading backstroker on the French national team, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1947, where he became an English professor, an expert on author Samuel Beckett, and a novelist.
[13] Murez's brother, Zachary (Zak), who is older than her by three years, set five swim records at Venice High School.
[8] He won 10 medals (four of them gold) in the 2003 Pan-American Maccabi Games in Santiago, Chile, and then swam for the Yale University swim team, before studying for a master's degree in computer science at UC San Diego.
[12] In March 2012 during her junior year, Murez and three Stanford teammates set the U.S. record for the 400-yard freestyle relay (3:10.77) while winning the 2012 NCAA Swimming Championships.
[7] In December 2015, at the 2015 European Short Course Swimming Championships at the Wingate Institute in Netanya, Israel, Murez set a new Israeli record of 1:56.34 in the 200 m, breaking by over two seconds the 4-year-old record that Amit Ivry had set at the 2011 Israeli Winter Championships.
On 3 July 2024, Murez was designated as Israel's flag bearer at the 2024 Paris Olympics, alongside judoka Peter Paltchik.
[20] At the 2009 Maccabiah Games in Israel, States Murez won nine medals (five gold and four silver) swimming for the United.
She earned her 5th gold medal anchoring the USA 4 × 100 m Freestyle Relay team, which set an all-time Maccabiah Games record (3:53:55).