30-year old Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu has announced that she is parting ways with coach Árpád Petrov and will coach herself heading toward the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Hosszu says that she lost confidence in Petrov at this summer’s World Championships because she felt that he didn’t want to win as much as she did.
Hosszu said that she had tried to overcome these feelings in recent months, but that the underlying problem persisted. She says that she expected more professional and personal attention from Petrov, but that during their time together, she grew to believe that he would not rise to the task. “In the run-up to the Olympic Games, I can’t take the burden of carrying someone on my back again,” Hosszu remarked.
Hosszu won 3 individual gold and 1 individual silver medal at the 2016 Olympic Games. This summer, at the World Championships, she won gold in both the 200 IM and 400 IM. She also scratched the 200 back, finished 17th in prelims of the 200 free to miss advancing, and finished 8th in the 100 backstroke.
“I will ask colleagues to time me, but I’ll be the coach, which means that I assume all responsibility,” Hosszu said of her new plan. “I have been writing the training plans myself for a long time anyway; I know exactly what preparation is needed…every day I train eight to ten hours and, if necessary, I drive myself almost to fainting. I decided to train for Tokyo on my own and put all my energy into preparing for the Olympics. I consider the coaching question as closed and I will not make any further statements on the matter.”
The timing of the announcement comes days after the team that Katinka Hosszu co-owns, Iron, was officially eliminated from contention for the International Swimming League title. Petrov also served as the head coach of Iron in the league’s inaugural season.
Hosszu began training with Petrov in the summer of 2018. That move came after a period spent training with USC head coach Dave Salo in the early part of the year when she began competing again after a very public breakup with coach, and now ex-husband, Shane Tusup.
Hosszu previously swam under Salo during her four years as a student at USC, where she ended her decorated NCAA career in 2012. After a relatively disappointing 2012 Olympic campaign, she enlisted then-boyfriend and future husband Shane Tusup as her coach. While she had immense success under Tusup, the two announced in December of 2017 that their relationship had hit a “difficult time,” which led to them attending a major Hungarian awards ceremony separately, and Tusup saying that he would “work to change.”
However, in May of 2018, the pair announced they were splitting personally and professionally, necessitating the coaching changes.
Árpád Petrov is the twin brother of Iván Petrov, who is married to Hungarian swimmer Zsuzsanna Jakabos. According to the report, Hosszu and Jakobos were at one point in time good friends, then developed into enemies of sorts when Hosszu was with Tusup.
Petrov was previously the head coach of the Swiss National Team.
This decision makes total sense. Adult athletes should know what they need better than anyone else. With a mature athlete, a successful coaching relationship has to be a collaboration based on mutual respect and a common set of goals. I’ve been essentially training myself for years. I know what I need, and it constantly changes. The biggest challenge for me is training alone. I enjoy company and feed off the motivation and energy of training partners, so I train with a group and modify the workouts. It’s not perfect, but I prefer it to training alone.
Katinka is super motivated. She will do well.
One more thing. In the other day Hosszu said she would be happy to win one gold in Tokyo, I am not sure she meant it indeed.
Perhaps her coach prefers to play safer and focus on IM only and let backstroke go away ?
I wonder what was the cause of Hosszu’s claim that her coach did not want win strongly enough. She felt it at the Worlds in Korea and now after the London Derby. One common thing was that Hosszu was rather unsuccessful in 200 back, she had to realize that the chance of medal in backstroke is slipping away from her. Now with Regan Smit and Minna Atherton her chances are minimal at best. I assume she wanted to swim at least three events in Tokyo, and back does not look promising. She might have better chance in 200 fly (in addition to the two IMs) but 200 fly going to conflict with 200 IM. I do not see why should… Read more »
There is only one person left in the world who could coach Katinka . Someone who knows nil about swimming but everything about workung 10 hours a day , dominator uber conditioning & thus winning .
I give you Bela Karolyi .
He is stuck now – too much pressure for him to answer today
Honestly, it’s pretty hard for Petrov to match the intensity of a coach who tattooed his swimmer’s times on his arms.
Say what you want about Tusap, much of which is 100% valid, but no one can accuse him of not wanting to win.
This is just pretty much the essence of all the hype around here.
Another coach kicked to the curb kinda makes you wonder who the real problem is….
its called : finding the right adjustments . Never happened in your personal life ? i guess it did many times ….
I was hoping it was “teams up with Yozhik.”