Hungarian superstar Katinka Hosszu has announced her intention to swim all three stops of the 2019 Nordic Swim Tour, which will kick off in Helsinki April 1st and 2nd.
The tour, which spans three cities and nine days in April, will begin in Helsinki April 1-2, then head to Bergen, Norway, April 5-7, and wraps up in Stockholm April 12-15.
World Record holder and Olympic gold medalist Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden will also be competing at all three stops of the 2019 Nordic Swim Tour, and will have the special privilege of concluding the competition in front of a home crowd.
In addition to the Nordic Swim Tour in April, Hosszu is expected to receive an invitation to race at the inaugural FINA Champions Swim series, which will host competitions in the United States, China, and Hosszu’s native Budapest (further information on selection criteria found here), as well as the 2019 FINA World Cup, a where Hosszu has already proven herself as the most dominant competitor in the series’ history.
Hosszu, a long-time advocate of increasing opportunities for professional swimmers, is a natural advocate for the Nordic Swim Tour, which will offer a total prize package of €129,000. Each stop has a different purse, with Stockholm offering nearly half of all total earnings at €64,000, meanwhile Bergen will put up €28,000 while Helsinki offers €25,000 for its two days of competition. In 2017, Hosszu and ex-husband Shane Tussup, alongside other world-class swimmers including Adam Peaty, Kosuke Hagino, and Sjostrom, among others, launched the Global Association of Professional Swimmers, or GAPS. Though GAPS has remained mostly quiet since 2017, Hosszu has thrown her support behind the newly-minted International Swimming League, or ISL, has risen as a new means for swimmers to earn a living by competing outside of the traditional FINA-only track, though the ISL has yet to successfully host a competition.
The 2019 Nordic Swim Series will be broadcast on EuroSport, and will also be available by “Pay on Demand” in other countries, including the US.
The financial rewards encourage swimmers to branch out and compete in multiple disciplines: the swimmers who rank the best across 12 different events and who attend all three legs of the tour will receive an additional €1,000 of prize money at the conclusion of the tour.
Whos most frequent name one may meet on the swimswam’s webpages? If you guess that is Hosszu then you are wrong. She is the second after Braden Keith. Can’t help myself to not ask a childish question: Why?
Not about Braden, that is where money and passion are involved, But about Hosszu.
Ledeczky: 2767, Hosszu 2199. 🙂