The national championship of swimmers continued – and the Milák show continued both in water and on land. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old Olympic champion of the Honvéd – a year after he last jumped into the pool in a bet situation – held a real demonstration of strength in the 100 freestyle, defeating the World Championship bronze medalist in the event at the beginning of the year without any serious effort. Nándort Németh.
Kristóf Milák caused general astonishment with his time of 49.02 in the preliminaries and 48.38, which CONFIDENTLY won gold in the finals.
The latter was only four hundredths short of the Olympic qualification time, but it was two times better than his swim a year ago – which also earned him the ob title. All this while the flood of news in recent months has been without exception that he does not train in the pool at all, or only in a very cocky way. How exactly our Tokyo champion prepared for the ob may remain an eternal mystery, in any case, his performance on the table was more than encouraging for his first start.
And now it’s time for the main number, the 200 butterflies. It belongs to the number in which he won the first world title of his career in 2019. The one in which he has already improved the world record twice, the latter – he swam in the Duna Arena at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest – is currently still reigning (1:50.34); and that of the number whose current Olympic champion is defending.
In the last three years, Milák has swum the same six numbers at the Hungarian championships, in addition to the 100 breaststroke ticked off on Tuesday and the 200 butterfly due on Wednesday morning, 50 breaststroke, 200 breaststroke, 50 butterfly and 100 butterfly are also included in the schedule this year. All of this is useful in that it is easy to compare which year it took place at a similar stage of the competition season. As we did on Tuesday, it is worth highlighting two points of reference here, last year’s ob in Kaposvár, and the time results of the 2021 competitions organized in the Danube Arena and the Olympic year, just like the current one.
In 2023, he won the preliminaries in the 200 butterfly with a time of 1:56.44 minutes, then swam 1:52.58 in the Hungarian championship final Richard Márton and Turkish Dominic preempted. In 2021, 1:52.50, which can be considered as a different dimension, appeared next to his name after the preliminary race, and then he won the final with 1:51.40, giving the then silver medalist a narrow five seconds. To Tamás Kenderesi. This led to a new Olympic record of 1:51.25 in Tokyo less than four months later – and a gold medal.
But back to the present!
Balázs Virth his student – by far the best entry time (1.52.58, within the Olympic level) – of course, was classified in the fourth, i.e. preliminary, promising to be the strongest heat. Next to him on track five is BVSC Balázs Holó jumped into the water, but a difference of six seconds was promised between the two of them (the second best entry time was that of Márton, who swam in the middle in the third race, 1:54.54). In other words, based on paper form, this time Milák had to fight “only” with himself and the stopwatch, as opposed to the 100 sprint, in which we predicted the challenger position for him beforehand.
However, distances of two hundred meters represent a completely different coffeehouse than competitions of fifty or one hundred meters: the last length is a test of strength that paints a clearer picture of an athlete’s endurance than at any point in Tuesday’s challenge.
Honvéd’s üdvöske took the lead with a first split time of 25.06, and then increased his advantage to one and a half seconds in the second stretch, albeit with a lap that was four hundredths of a second slower (almost nothing) compared to the Kaposvár split time – 55.07. He started the last, most awaited 50 meters with a time of 1:25.16, which was again better than a year ago, as well as the 1:55.43 after reaching. He is one second stronger than he was in last year’s qualifying swim.
The Turks have the second best time Steel crane put together in the preliminaries, he finished with 1:56.89. According to the preliminary chances, Márton, who alone can squeeze Milák for the Hungarian championship title, reached the final with 1:58.44, while the fourth best time Mr. Antoné became – he swam in the fourth race two courses to the right of Milák. The best Hungarian rival also got more than three seconds at the start…
As for the mystery of endurance: his last fifty part time was also better than a year ago in the preliminaries – by eight tenths.
Another challenge awaited our Tokyo champion half an hour later. He will be interested in the ninth heat out of eleven in the 50 sprint. In the latter field with 21.67 Sebastien Szabó’s the best entry time. In Kaposvár, Szabó won (21.82), he can be called decent in the 50th distance, ahead of Milák, who took silver (22.06), with a difference of 24 hundredths.
Now he completed a preliminary race of 22.29, winning this confidently by eight tenths of a cent. Two races later, it turned out that the time also means the four course for the 50 fast final. The second best swim of the field went to BVSC Bence Szabados presented with 22.40, the third Nándor Németh with 22.50, while the defending champion Szabó reached the final in fourth place, with a time of 22.59 seconds.
The 126th National Swimming Championships began on Tuesday and will continue until Friday evening. The preliminaries are held in the morning and the finals in the afternoon in the Duna Arena.
According to the preliminary program, the final of the 200 butterfly is expected to be at 17 hours 5 minutes, and the 50 breaststroke at 17 hours 48 minutes.
The ob program and the results of our swimmers by clicking on the website of the association you can browse.
(Cover photo: Kristóf Milák (j) in the men’s 100-meter freestyle final at the national swimming championships in the Duna Arena on April 9, 2024. Photo: Tamás Kovács / MTI)
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