Balaton Cross-Swimming Competition Ends With New Record – Photo Gallery!

The annual Balaton Cross Swimming competition, a once-in-a-lifetime experience during a hot summer at Lake Balaton, was held this past weekend. Although due to the coronavirus epidemic, the event had been postponed, thousands of swimmers tried themselves on the 5200 meter long distance from Révfülöp, the Northern shore to Balatonboglár on the Southern shore of the ‘Hungarian sea.’

Hungary’s largest open-water competition was held on Saturday, August 1st at Lake Balaton. The annual cross-Balaton swim encourages more and more people to take a deep breath and swim the 5.2 km distance between Révfülöp and Balatonboglár. The race started from Révfülöp from 8 am, and those who registered in advance could start to complete the distance until 12 o’clock. For beginners, a new half-distance (2.6 km) was also possible to complete for the enthusiastic swimmers.

This year, the 23-year-old world champion Hungarian swimmer, Kristóf Rasovszky won the competition, and crossed the lake with a new record in 57 minutes. The previous record holder was Márk Papp, who completed the 5.2 km distance in 58 minutes and 30 seconds back in 2016. Anna Olasz, silver world medalist and European champion was first to cross the finish line among the women with 1:01.37, however, she could not break the record, so Éva Risztov remained the record holder with 1:01.

Gábor Gellért, the federal captain of the open water swimming team, said that almost all members of the junior and adult teams took part in the event, supplemented by the pool competitor Ajna Késely as well. A total of 10,000 people pre-registered for the event, so the number of swimmers reached the limit, and the all-time number of the Balaton cross-swimmers surpassed the milestone of 200,000 people this year.