The three-time Olympic swimming champion posted on Instagram that she personally congratulated the Prime Minister on his election victory on Sunday night.Continue reading
Katinka Hosszú, three-time Olympic champion swimmer, has not yet ended her athletic career and is looking forward to motherhood. In an exclusive interview with M4 Sport, the 33-year-old spoke about her becoming a mother and her sports history, among other things.
“You will see me like this according to my plans, at the moment I am not saying that this is the end of this chapter. Fortunately I have achieved everything I wanted to achieve, and more than I wanted to achieve, which is always a great comfort for an athlete,” said Katinka Hosszú when asked if the fans will see her pacing in the water or concentrating before the start.
“I have never been a mum before, what is coming up will be completely new for me. My athlete status is active at the moment, I can not yet imagine how I will be doing sport with the baby, how much time and energy I will have. This challenge is still ahead of me, it will be an interesting time in my life.” The Olympic champion announced in March that she was pregnant with her first child.
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She also talked about how her unborn child will definitely learn to swim, but she will not necessarily steer them towards competitive swimming. She added that in today’s world, sport can still teach young people what perseverance is, how to set goals and fight for them.
Katinka Hosszú has been nicknamed the Iron Lady for her achievements throughout her career, but this has also come with many challenges.
For many years, I felt that I was really just an Iron Lady and that my focus was always hard and fierce, while my human values took a back seat, so there was some struggle with the Iron Lady,”
she said. adding that she did not have time to make friends or have a social life, which most people needed. “I like to have a chat, a nice word or two with anyone, but the constant pace and the Iron Lady mode did not fit in.”
A film about the Hungarian champion swimmer titled Katinka has also been made and will premiere on May 7 at 9pm on the Duna channel. In this context, Katinka Hosszú said that when the film was made, it was important for her to show that she started out as a little girl in a swimming pool in Baja, southern Hungary, and from there she managed to break world records, travel the world, go to university in the United States, and that swimming gave her all of this.
She said that the film also peddles the duality in her life that came with being an Iron Lady, where only hard performance mattered, and privacy less. “I now think that to have performed at such a high level for so many years in Iron Lady mode is a great skill that I can draw on when I need to,” said Katinka Hosszú.
She added that she also had no energy for human needs outside sport to build or maintain friendships. That said, she feels lucky to have kept friends in the swimming community, “but there were times when there was no time.”
The interview also touches on Hosszú’s recently broken 400 medley world record of 4:26.36, which was set by 16-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh of Canada in 4:25.87. The Hungarian champion said that McIntosh has a similar training method and attitude to her. She noted that she now knows the recipe for a 4:20 time. “So it is interesting, if I was 15 now, the story of my career would be completely different,” she said, adding that she did not think 4:20 was an unthinkable time.
Featured photo via Facebook/Katinka Hosszu