arena Swim of the Week: 14-Year-Old Koppany Kakuk Sets Hungarian 200 FR Age Record

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Disclaimer: Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Swim of the Week is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.

The recently-concluded Hungarian Youth Championships (LCM) saw several of the nation’s up-and-coming athletes produce noteworthy swims on their rise through the rankings, including a few new National Age Records.

One of those came from Koppany Zeta Kakuk, who put up a time of 1:54.04 to set a new Hungarian mark for 14-year-old boys.

Kakuk, who trains out of the Kaposvári club in Kaposvár (where the competition was held), set the boys’ 13-year-old record just over six months ago (December 2021) in 1:57.17. Prior to that his best stood at 1:59.36, set in May 2021.

The progression Kakuk has made in such a short time is certainly noteworthy, as is the closing ability he put on display in the swim.

The youngest contestant of the ‘B’ final by two years, Kakuk was locked in a tight battle with several other athletes before dropping a scintillating 27.95 final 50 to touch first by over a second.

Kakuk’s Splits:

• 27.13
• 29.46 (56.59)
• 29.50 (1:26.09)
• 27.95 (1:54.04)

With somewhere in the vicinity of 18 months to work, Kakuk is already within two seconds of Kristof Milak‘s 15-year-old record of 1:52.17, and he would currently rank 11th all-time in the U.S. 13-14 age group.

This swim was one of many blistering times put up by Kakuk at the meet. He also split 51.87 anchoring his club’s 400 medley relay, and put up a flat-start 100 free time of 52.64 on a lead-off leg, narrowly missing the Hungarian age record of 52.29.

The future is bright.

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