It’s been a thrilling first few days in the pool at this
year’s Olympic Games, highlighted by the stunning performances of 27-year-old
Hungarian Katinka Hosszu. Competing in her fourth Olympics, Hosszu has
dominated the field and hauled in three gold medals, her first ever medals at
the Olympics, and has set two Olympic records and one world record in the
process. It’s hardly a surprise. Hosszu has been consistently brilliant since
2013, setting multiple world and championship records since. But how has
someone who should be well past her best become such a revelation?
It is extremely unusual for a female swimmer to peak so late
in their careers. History tells us that the best of the best often break onto
the scene in their teens and peak either side of twenty. While male swimmers
can often continue to perform at the highest level through to their late
twenties, such a scenario is exceedingly uncommon for women. Taking a look at
some of the greatest female swimmers in history, there is a common denominator:
age. Dawn Fraser was 18 when she won her first gold medal in Melbourne in 1956;
Shane Gould was 15 when she got three golds in 1972; Janet Evans had just
turned 17 when she did the same in 1988; the list goes on and on. Even today,
Katie Ledecky has transformed women’s freestyle despite only being 19. But none
of the aforementioned swimmers (apart from Ledecky who is still an unknown)
lasted at the top for a significant period of time. Fraser won her last gold in
Rome having just turned 27, Gould retired at the age of 17, while Evans retired
after failing to win any medals at the 1996 Games at the age of 25. It
therefore seems hard to believe that someone who has not always been considered
one of the world’s top swimmers, has suddenly become such a dominant force in
her mid-twenties.
Until this week, Hosszu had failed to deliver the goods at
the Olympic Games. Four years ago, Hosszu finished fourth in the 400m
individual medley, eighth in the 200m individual medley, and ninth in the 200m
butterfly. Realistically, such a disappointing performance should have been the
end of her career. However, she persevered. The first change she made was her
coach, appointing her boyfriend Shane Tusup as her trainer and motivator. Tusup
has already made a splash of his own during these Olympics, with his excessive
emotion and passion in the stands raising many eyebrows. According to those
close to the pair, Tusup is an extremely tough trainer, who apparently is
borderline inappropriate in his coaching of Hosszu. Together the pair decided to
enter Hosszu in more events to lessen the pressure on her to win.
It worked. At the 2013 World Championships, Hosszu won both
the 400m and 200m individual medley, and also gained a bronze in the 200m
butterfly. In the following World Cup, she destroyed the rest of the field,
breaking eight world records and scoring 840 points over the eight meets. The
next best scored 288. In just over twelve months, Hosszu had gone from a competitor
barely making finals, to a multiple world-record holder and world champion.
She has not let up her performances since. As the world
watched in awe as she lowered the 400m individual medley world record by two
seconds, she barely broke a sweat. This was the end product of a four-year
training effort. Yet, in this day and age, one feels like such performances are
too good to be true. The record she broke had been formerly held by Chinese
teenager Ye Shiwen, whose rapid swim in London four years ago has since been
deemed as likely to have been fuelled by performance-enhancing drugs. By not
just beating, but annihilating that record, Hosszu is cast under the same
shadow.
Of course, this is not the first time that such a rise has
occurred. History has a way of repeating itself. In 1996 Irish swimmer Michelle
Smith had a disturbingly similar rise. Having failed to medal in either of her
first two Olympics, Smith romped through the field in Atlanta, winning three
golds and a bronze, including two golds in the individual medley events, the
same as Hosszu this time around. Smith was 26 in Atlanta and like Hosszu, had only
started to ascend to the top at a late age and after a fairly mediocre career.
To cap off their similarities, Smith was also coached by her husband in Atlanta.
While Smith never tested positive during the Games, there remained a great deal
of suspicion around her rapid rise to the top. Two years later, she was banned
from swimming after she was caught manipulating a drug test. She kept her
medals from Atlanta, but it is now assumed that she was probably using PEDs in
the build-up to those games.
At this stage there is obviously no proof that Hosszu has
taken any kind of performance enhancing drugs, nor that she is alone in doing
so. However, her ascension is virtually unprecedented, especially at her age.
For now, we have to assume that her hard work has paid off, but time will tell
if what we saw was reality or simply a façade.
