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Contrary to recent rumors, Hungarian swimming star Katinka Hosszú says she is not thinking about retiring for the time being and has new goals for the future.
Hosszú told sports daily Nemzeti Sport in an interview that she is not planning to retire yet, even though there were such rumors circulating recently. She has even set a new goal in her mind to be the first swimmer who owns 100 medals. She currently has 96: 64 gold, 20 silver, and 12 bronze.
I’ll retire one day, and there’s a lot less time in front of me than there is behind me in swimming for sure. However, some of the allegations in the press included only one true statement because I’m really turning thirty-three in May, and I feel a little bad about that because I still enjoy swimming,”
she said.
Hosszú took a break after she did not perform as well as many expected from her at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Hosszú, nicknamed ‘Iron Lady,’ is otherwise a three-time Olympic, nine-time World, and fifteen-time European champion.
I rested a lot after Tokyo, and during this time I did not even think about when I would go down to the swimming pool again. After a while though, I started to miss swimming. It’s not the feeling of me winning, the award ceremonies, or the fact that after the victory many people write about me a lot, but the work, how the adrenaline works in me during competitions, that my body is in good shape, and that I can do almost anything, everything,”
Hosszú said about why she enjoys swimming.
She was the first athlete to hold the world record in all five medley swimming events (200m, 400m, short course: 100m, 200m, 400m) at the same time. Now she says she is concentrating on the medley: “I don’t really want to swim in the backstroke at world competitions anymore, but all the more in the butterfly.”
The full interview can be read here in English, and here in Hungarian.
Featured image: Katinka Hosszú after the women’s 400m medley final at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, postponed to 2021 due to the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus at the Tokyo Aquatic Center on July 25, 2021. Photo by Tamás Kovács/MTI
