Swimming at the 2024 Olympic Games may be over but some drama is heating up outside the pool involving the Hungarian Swimming Association (Magyar Úszó Szövetség, MÚSZ).
Earlier this week, Hungarian Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu fired off a social media post calling for the resignation of MUSZ leadership due to its treatment of gold medalist Kristof Milak.
Milak is the reigning world record holder and 2020 Olympic champion in the 200m fly but the 24-year-old settled for silver behind Frenchman Leon Marchand this time around in Paris. He rebounded with gold in the 100m fly.
Entering these Olympics, Milak’s preparation followed a rocky road, including inconsistent training. Milak’s lack of motivation was called out by Hungarian national team coach Csaba Sos, with the former Olympic swimmer stating last December, “I emphasize that great Olympic success is no longer a reality.”
Hosszu’s post is an open letter to Hungarian swimming, beginning, “There has never been such a MUSZ leader who has damaged the preparation of its best competitor so much.”
She continued to detail the 200m fly race specifically, stating, “Bob Bowman [coach of Marchand] knew months before the Olympics that his student had to prepare for the last 50 meters of the 200-meter butterfly, physically, but mostly mentally.
“In Paris, Bowman had to say only one thing to Marchand: “You trained the hardest in the world, you will catch up with Milák in the last 50, who trained hardly this year, you deserve the gold medal.
“Unfortunately, this is not the first Olympic Medal which is not realized due to the leadership of MUSZ, but we hope it will be the last.
“Milák is just the tip of the iceberg, let’s think about it if they do this with the world record-holder Olympic champion, what will the other competitors do?
“The leadership of MUSZ did the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do. They didn’t complete the “job.”
“After such insidious and spineless behavior, the only decent step would be the resignation of the entire leadership.
“But this time, not only with an early election, which is used by intimidation and blackmail, they will make it nothing again.
“Already in my time there was a disagreement between the 80s generation and the leadership of MUSZ, this only became more effective with the next generation.
“Hungarian Sport should not be allowed to further damage.”
I still don’t understand what she is upset about. Is she upset that the federation was publicly critical of Milak, or is she upset that they let Milak get off the reservation?
Yea maybe there’s some translation issue because the logic doesn’t add up frankly…
She’s upset they revealed to the public and thus his competition about his lack of conditioning making it possible for Marchand to know exactly what type of race strategy was best to beat him.
Oh, well that seems pretty marginal. I guess there is some small psychological benefit of knowing that Milak might not be in top form, but his times from the past six months kind of indicated that anyways.
I am not Hosszu’s biggest fan but agree with her here. The behaviour of some of the blazers in this sport are disgusting
Milak out there “yo keep me out of this, I just want to chill”
Tuff message, but honestly if milak can achieve what he did in Paris with little training and motivation, then just imagine how fast he could be. Honestly I think bowman might be a good fit for him as he has evolved past his psychological failures with michael, and has a huge training group that would push milak
Milak to UT would be wild
Good for her.
Wow, extremely cutting message yet very needed.
What a joke! I wonder what is behind this. Did her swimming club not get enough finacial support and she is mad? Instead of saying what’s bothering her she finds some nonsense argument as usual.
1) Marchand not only won the 200m butterfly because Milak did not have enough strength at the end, but also quite a few other events against people who trained very hard for years. What she is saying here is very hurtful towards Marchand and he could, of course, in an open letter ask her to immediately resign from future swimming related matters!
2) As I remember well, it was KATINKA HOSSZU who declared on television before the London Olympics that of all the Hungarian swimmers… Read more »
First point is objective – yes people train hard and whatever.
Second point tho – people change? Perhaps she has gone through that self reflection that you say she needs. It has been 12 years after all.
And even if she is a hypocrite, that doesn’t mean the message itself carries zero substance. It seems that you are taking her comments as a personal attack and disregarding the intent of her message.
No, I just imitated Katinka, the way she lashed out, I was curious about the reactions.
I am not sure what is behind her lashing out, we probably will never really know. I was even thinking that Milak maybe trained at her cliub for a few months.
But to state that the trainer of Milak (and the fed) is responsible for Marchand winning gold is total nonsense.
What she is suggesting is that the trainer should have lied about Milak and then Milak would have won gold…
So if they would have lied Hosszu would have been happy? I think she would have used then that case against them to ask them to resign.
Her agenda is something… Read more »
If she had some self reflection she would not have talked about Marchand as an opportunistic fortune seeker. The guy excells in several strokes, also in butterfly. And he could swim several times a day, he is young and wanted to prove himself, nothing wrong with that.
The Hungarian Swimming Fed is terrible but this one is more like Hosszu’s own beef with the Fed.