Katinka Hosszú and the doping allegation

Katinka Hosszú is Hungary’s miracle swimmer – the “Iron Lady.” She is the best all-around swimmer on earth right now, the pride of the Hungarian Swimming Association and personal favorite of sport-crazy Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

She is incredible. When she recently entered the Charlotte Arena Pro Swim Series and raced seven individual events – she won six! Ms. Hosszú travels around the world with her American trainer-husband, Shane Tusup, enters in a bounty of events and always delivers. When she touches water, she wins and takes the prize money. Last fall, she became the first swimmer ever to surpass $1 million earned solely in prize money in the pool.

Prime Minister Orbán and Katinka Hosszú (left).

Prime Minister Orbán and Katinka Hosszú (left).

In an interview Ms. Hosszú talked about her husband’s family in Northern California who help her to invest and manage money. Beside her race winnings, she has book deals, endorsements and business ventures; with her husband she runs a little business empire.

Casey Barrett is a 40 year old former Canadian swimmer who competed at the 1996 Summer Olympics, co-founder of a New York City swim school and won several awards for his work writing and producing the Olympics on NBC television. He is an insider in the swimming world.

Now in a well-written blog post Mr. Barrett raises the suspicion that Hosszú might be using performance enhancing drugs. Obviously, Mr. Barrett has the right to raise concerns, but  Ms. Hosszú was tested numerous times with negative results. At this point, there is absolutely no proof that Hosszú has ever used illegal performance enhancing substances! (Click here to read Mr. Barrett’s blogpost.)

I wrote about her in the Hungarian weekly, Élet és Irodalom, because I found her career unusual. The 26 years old Katinka is a late-bloomer, a star in Hungary and also an All-American in the US. She grew up in a small Southern-Hungarian town, Baja, and after completing high school she got her big break. She won a swimming scholarship at the University of Southern California in 2008! There she met Shane Tusup and she bloomed. (My piece in ÉS about Ms. Hosszú – in Hungarian)

While other top woman swimmers, like American Katie Ledecky, are world class athletes at age 16, Ms. Hosszú had limited success as a teenager. She started her incredible series after coming out from her depression in 2012. Today, she and her husband are based in Hungary, where she swims in the Hungarian club, Vasas.

Shane Tusup and Katinka Hosszú showing their rings – just married.

Shane Tusup and Katinka Hosszú showing their rings – just married.

Mr. Barrett writes: “No one competes, consistently, at a higher level than she does. Repeat – no one, ever. Not Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky and certainly not Ryan Lochte, who’s always tended to look like a beaten slow sack of chiseled flesh when he races while immersed in heavy training. But not Hosszu. Her consistency, her ability to recover, and her never-flagging form continues without breakdown, regardless of when or where the race is going down.”

If Mr. Barrett’s doping allegation has merit, it will have far reaching consequences for Hungary’s swim sport. Tamás Gyárfás, President of the Hungarian Swimming Association is already attacking the blogger: “The Hungarian Swimming Association has read with the utmost dismay the outrageous commentary published in your online platform, defaming Katinka Hosszú (…) As the President of the Hungarian Swimming Association, I hereby declare that we would never question any achievement by any great swimmers, let alone from the United States, even if many of them often seem to be superhuman – still, all admired by us, forever.” Mr. Gyárfás is shooting with a heavy cannon at a blog post.

He has good reason to do that. Budapest will be hosting the 2017 World Championship and Prime Minister Orbán has already committed to the International Swimming Federation (FINA). The event was originally planned to be held in Guadalajara, Mexico, but they pulled out due to the high cost. Mr. Orbán bravely promised to complete the super-expensive Dagály Swim Complex in record time.

The doping allegation couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Hungarian Swimming Association.

György Lázár

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