World champ and world record holder Katinka Hosszu called a press conference Tuesday to criticize the swimming federation in her home country of Hungary for failing to provide enough resources to its swimmers.
In the press conference (translated from Hungarian to English), Hosszu said that “while the Hungarian Swimming Federation expects world class performances, the support they provide is far from world class level.”
Hosszu suggested the frustration with her federation has been festering for some time. Hosszu says she has been “trying to solve this problem in house” for the past three years, but claimed her solutions have fallen on deaf ears.
The crux of the disagreement seems to fall on the allocation of resources to athletes to implement their training programs. Hosszu says she and coach Shane Tusup discussed ways to improve her training program leading up to the Rio Olympics, and approached the federation for support to help implement them.
“[W]e not only found technical and training aspects to improve but we also found a number of other aspects which would make the program complete and well rounded,” Hosszu said in her press conference, though she didn’t name the specific improvements she and Tusup had in mind. “After multiple sit downs, explanations and official requests I was unfortunately denied these resources.”
Hosszu notes that the federation had not given her what she termed as “additional resources” in previous years either – she says she was “tagged as bringing no results” after a 6th place finish at the 2011 World Championships and then again after a 4th place finish at the 2012 Olympics. Hosszu brought home two golds and a bronze medal from the 2015 World Championships, and said she expected that to the the results the federation needed in order to justify allotting her more support for her program.
Hosszu also claimed her criticisms were not about money, but about the betterment of Hungarian swimming in general. Hosszu has won the FINA World Cup series for the past five years, taking in $325,000 this year alone.
“This is not about money,” she said in the press conference. “I can afford to pay for all the resources I would need to make these improvement to my program. In fact, I would have no problem continuing to reinvest my prize money into my own continued success. However if I were to pay for all my additional resources, which hopefully make it easier for me to achieve our mutual goals, then what is purpose of the federation? What are they doing if not providing for their swimmers? If it is up to us to research, analyze, train and then compete, what role does that leave for the federation in this partnership? Not to mention that I know from experience that we are competing against athletes who are strongly supported in more ways than in Hungary we can imagine.”
Hosszu also made clear she didn’t intend her press conference to be an attack on the federation but rather a catalyst “to initiate change for the better.”
You can read an English translation of her press conference here.
Actually, it was a usual press conference to sum up the year not a special one designated to attack the federation. It was just a part of it. The additional resources she mentioned are a masseur, dryland/body building rooms within the pool complex (she trains in a public gym), and underwater camera system with video/stroke analysis. Frankly, her claims are not far fetched. Almost all other federations or even most colleges in the US or AUS provide these (in my opinion) minimum resources. She has underlined the fact, that this part of the press conference was not intended as an attack, but to facilitate the open discussion and to find a solution as fast as possible. Also, she is stepping… Read more »
Thanks for the added clarification. Lebron James was trying to hire a full time masseuse recently as well. Hope she has some success getting the facilities improved or else maybe she should just build the Katinka Hosszu Olympic Training Center and build up her own club team of elite swimmers cause I would think other swimmers would flock there to learn her training methods. Isnt Hungary going to host Worlds in 2017? The swim federation is probably on the brink of BK after paying FINA and maybe this is the underlying problem here, she sees a $100M go out the door and her and the other swimmers get almost nothing in return..
So why stop at swimming pools? Why do we need any of the pooled assets derived from society? Of course swimming pools are typically publicly funded, as are soccer fields, baseball diamonds and parks. What’s the point? In a shared society, funding these large facilities allows then to exist, much like libraries, museums and stadiums. Just because you don’t use them doesn’t mean they don’t have a place or fulfill a need in our country.
i am amazed she got everything in Hungary
read, read, read and again read! even if she got’s everything as you say, what about the other swimmers out there?
… “This is not about money,” she said in the press conference. “I can afford to pay for all the resources I would need to make these improvement to my program … However if I were to pay for all my additional resources, which hopefully make it easier for me to achieve our mutual goals, then what is purpose of the federation? What are they doing if not providing for their swimmers? If it is up to us to research, analyze, train and then compete, what role does that leave for the federation in this partnership? Not to mention… Read more »
I believe that swimmers should receive zero tax dollars.
So, you are against college swimming, too? I suspect some tax money is going to swimming programs in colleges. Yet, tomorrow when American swimmers are beaten by Russians and Chinese, you are going to pull out your open carry gun and fire few in the air, asking to “bring old American glory back, or else” huh?
That’s somewhat disingenuous because many schools are private and still have elite swim teams and even world class programs. Obviously being private institutions, they don’t receive tax dollars for their athletic programs and swim teams.
The other issue is that even at public universities, athletic departments may come close to breaking even in many cases. I understand that rather few actually make a PROFIT (I think Texas and Ohio State sometimes do) but most of them recoup a large amount of what they spend (we’ll say 70-90%). Furthermore a lot of what isn’t recouped from ticket sales, TV deals and merchandising is often found not from public coffers but from the donations from wealthy alumni.
I’m not saying… Read more »
Just about every competition pool in America is subsidized by the government in some way. Stanford may be private but it is nonprofit and it doesnt have to pay property taxes on the value of its real property and they get huge tax breaks on the investment earnings of their endowment funds which is in the billions now. So indirectly almost all universities received govt assistance in the form of tax breaks.
USA national team swimmers are paid by USA swimming and audited financials are posted on the website. You can look at the revenue sources and how the money is spent but I don’t think there is a swimming tax in the USA. I think its a stretch to… Read more »
I believe swimmers shouldn’t pee in the pool. It’s disgusting.
And again: history repeats itself….