Hugo Gonzalez Won’t Rejoin Cal for Fall Semester; Unsure About Spring

NCAA Champion Hugo Gonzalez won’t be competing for the Cal Golden Bears – at least not when they kick off the season in San Luis Obispo on September 30.

The 23-year old Spaniard told SwimSwam on Sunday that he is staying home in Spain for the fall semester and “still considering the spring option.”

While in Spain, he is training with the club Real Canoe. He has been a member of that club since 2016, with the exception of last year, where he jumped to Madrid Natacion. At Real Canoe, he is training under coach Jose Ignacio, better known by his nickname “Taja”.

Gonzalez scored 41 points individually and swam a leg of Cal’s 400 free relay last season as the Golden Bears won their 7th NCAA title. That included an NCAA title and a record-shattering performance of 3:32.88 in the 400 IM.

The margin between Cal and Texas at the end of the meet was 51 points.

With another competitive battle expected at the 2023 NCAA Championships between the two teams that have occupied the top two slots at that meet for almost a decade, his presence could turn out to be the difference-maker for Cal.

Gonzalez is famous for his last-minute decision-making. He made his Cal debut in 2019 at the Pac-12 Championships. Before that, at Virginia Tech, he left after just a few days, narrowly missing the deadline to burn a year of eligibility.

Gonzalez began his college career at Auburn, where he broke multiple school records as a freshman.

While Gonzalez has already used the standard four years of collegiate eligibility, he was granted a bonus 5th year, as did all of the other NCAA Division I athletes who competed in the COVID-impacted 2020-2021 collegiate season.

Even without Gonzalez, the IM races look stacked for the upcoming NCAA season. The defending 200 IM and 400 IM World Champion Leon Marchand will be in his second season for Arizona State; Carson Foster, the silver medalist in both races, will be a junior at Texas. Joining the fray will be Baylor Nelson at Texas A&M, an IM specialist ranked #1 in his class, among others like Jake Foster, Destin Lasco, and Luca Urlando.

Over the summer, Gonzalez represented his native Spain at the World Aquatics Championships. There, he finished 11th in the 100 back (53.50), 13th in the 200 back (1:59.05), and 12th in the 200 IM (1:58.41). Gonzalez expressed disappointment in those results after the meet, and ultimately withdrew from the European Championships.

His international event selection continues a divergence between the events he chooses internationally and the event he chooses in NCAA competition in the 25 yard pool. At the 2022 NCAA Championships, he swam the 200 IM, 400 IM, and 200 breast. In international competition, he didn’t swim any breaststroke races, nor the 400 IM, in spite of his success at the college level, and he has increasingly shifted his focus in long course toward the sprint backstrokes.

Gonzalez is a two-time Spanish Olympian, including finishing 6th in the 100 back at the Tokyo 2020 Games. He was also 11th in the semi-finals of the 200 IM, his only other event there.

He was the 2020 (2021) European Champion in the 200 IM, also scoring silver in the 100 back and bronze in the 50 back.

Gonzalez majored in computer science at Cal.