While Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu has withdrawn from the upcoming Euro Meet in Luxembourg, her latest Facebook post says that she’s swimming on to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The post, which is to thank the company “Univer Product Zrt” for extending their sponsorship of her for 3 years, starts “let’s go together until Tokyo!” Univer is a fully Hungarian-owned food manufacturing and marketing company that made its mark selling condiments (including the Hungarian staple paprika) and has since expanded into jams, fruit juices, baby food, and other food products.
The company says it has always viewed promoting sport as being “of paramount importance,” and that they are proud of the country’s water sport achievements (they also sponsor the country’s men’s water polo team, which has won the Olympic title 9 times).
The news for swim fans is that the sponsorship announcement came with a pledge from Hosszu to train until the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Hosszu will turn 31 before those games begin. She has previously stated her goal to continue racing at least until Tokyo, but some local observers have questioned that after swimming through a momentous home World Championships and recent struggles with her husband and coach Shane Tusup.
Since the 2012 Olympic Games, Hosszu has taken on one of the most impressive swimming runs in history. She’s won 6 World Championships in long course (plus a 7th in 2009), 13 World Championships in short course, 3 Olympic gold medals in Rio, and recently completed a perfect 6-golds-in-6-individual-events performance at the European Championships. She’s also won over $1 million in prize money, believed to be more than anybody in history, including 5 consecutive series titles at the FINA Swimming World Cup.
Whoever mentions $1million prize money has to clarify that most of it came from FINA’s world cup. This tournament perfectly suited Hosszu/Tusup’s life style and business model. It hasn’t attracted big names since it required big team’s travel expenses, time from home/family and conflicted with the coach’s and supporting team’s schedules. That made this tournament not highly profitable if the swimmer competes in a few events only. It also required significant adjustments to the traditional approach of training phases during the season. No wonder that the field was made mostly by local swimmers at each stops who took it as the training exercise that could also give some insignificant but still money. That made the level of competition low and… Read more »
Yozhik, you put the cart before the horse…
If you ment that I should say “TUSUP/HOSSZU’s life style and business model” instead Hosszu/Tusup’s ….. then I won’t argue. You are much closer to their life and business to say who is the cart and who is the horse allegorIcal speaking. If you are talking about something else then more clarification of your point is needed.
BTW do you know the exact amount of prize money received by Hosszu at World cup for the last years year by year? Tnx.
I ment that missing from Flanders Cup and Euro Meet this year (and only this) isn’t because of the other athletes and toughness of making some more money (eg. Mare Nostrum, Pro Swim Series etc. they were througout World Cup era too).
Everybody can know it, Swimswam wrote it regurarly and yearly. Of course we can read not only about World Cups but nearly all the other main series or races. You can find the prize money list recieved by anybody if you are interested in.
$1500 for each gold medal. So in average 2IM, 2back, 2fly, 2free makes about $10,000 for each stop. 9 stops in three clusters makes $90,000
$50,000 to win each cluster that for three clusters makes $150,000
$100,000 for overall win.
So all together World Cup paid Hosszu around $350,000 per season
Just only three seasons gave already Hosszu more than $1million in prize money from World Cup. And it was more than three years.
I don’t blame Hosszu for taking this money if some stupidity is ready to pay. but I would not call it a super swimmer’s achievement but rather unprofessional way of spending money by FINA.
2017 – $276,500
https://staging.swimswam.com/sjostrom-caps-2017-world-cup-371k-le-clos-328k/
2016 – $386,000
https://staging.swimswam.com/hosszu-finishes-2016-world-cup-386k-morozov-332k/
2015 – $325,000
https://staging.swimswam.com/hosszus-325k-van-der-burghs-262k-lead-final-2015-world-cup-money-lists/
Tnx