SWIMMING-HUNGARY/KATINKA-HOSSZU Olympic failure taught swimmer Hosszu to seek gold in business

Record ID: 146106

  • Title: SWIMMING-HUNGARY/KATINKA-HOSSZU Olympic failure taught swimmer Hosszu to seek gold in business
  • Date: 27th July 2015
  • Summary: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (JULY 15, 2015) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SWIMMER, KATINKA HOSSZU, SAYING: "Honestly, of course I would like to have an Olympic medal because I don't have that one yet. But it's not something I obsess over. I perform year after year and I don't only look at 2016. I definitely want to keep swimming, we're actually thinking about 2020 as well, maybe 2
  • Embargoed: 11th August 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAZAKPZ4BZ7TWH9MR273GUCDGD
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Before becoming 2014 World Swimmer of the Year and the first to pass the $1 million mark in prize money, Hungarian Katinka Hosszu had come close to throwing in the towel, frustrated that she failed to win a medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
    Instead, she adjusted her thinking and challenged the Olympics-focused training cycle traditionally followed by the sport's top athletes. Olympic medals are no longer her ultimate goal, just one of several aspects to her schedule, she says.
    As Hosszu prepared for the world championships, which are currently taking place in Kazan, Russia, she already had in mind the autumn World Cup series as well.
    Although she is widely expected to dominate at Rio 2016, the Olympics are but a distant presence on her horizon.
    The seven-stop World Cup series is her day job now. Last year she tried 14 events, collected a total of 51 gold medals in 10 different events and sped to five short-course world records, towering above the field. She made about $400,000.
    Her fellow swimmers are taking note of her approach, which could help turn the sport into a lucrative business as the best athletes compete well into their thirties and are deepening the field where a 26-year-old once counted as old.
    Hosszu herself is 26 and nowhere near done with the sport. Other top talents like South Africa's Chad Le Clos or the Netherlands' Inge Dekker are also successful World Cup racers.
    Hosszu, who has one blue and one brown eye to augment a playful smile, is happy to treat the sport like any other job.
    "Honestly, of course I would like to have an Olympic medal because I don't have that one yet. But it's not something I obsess over," she told Reuters by the pool after a recent training session.
    "I perform year after year and I don't only look at 2016. I definitely want to keep swimming, we're actually thinking about 2020 as well, maybe 2024, so it's going to be one of the stops in my career but it's not something that - like I felt in London - it decides whether I'm a good swimmer or not, I don't feel that anymore."
    Hosszu said she can continue swimming at a high level year on year because she can afford it. Most swimmers have retired while still in their twenties not because of physical limitations but because of financial ones, she said.
    "I think what the sport hasn't seen as much too (is) someone who is looking at the sport as really a profession and as a business, so we do competitions and trainings as business. This is our job and this is what we are focusing on. So, of course when I get prize money and we go to competitions and there is prize money, of course we look at it. I mean, who doesn't want to earn money from their profession?".
    She is building her own Iron Lady brand with swimwear maker Arena, and has sponsorship deals as well, but prize money is her bread and butter.
    "This is why it was really important that 1 million dollars was from prize money, which means that it was already said that it's not a sponsorship, it's not something that I just get for being me - it's that I perform and I swim for each dollar basically, so the money is there and anyone can get it," she said.
    Hosszu looks at the London Olympics as a watershed moment. Having acquired a psychology degree from the University of Southern California, she staked her future in swimming on her Olympic results. In the end, that singular pressure proved too much and she was close to giving up the sport after failure to reach the podium.
    Her career was saved by a completely new approach.
    "For us it's trying to be one person to kind of make a stand and say: you can do this, you can swim fast in season, you can make a lot of money by racing a lot, and you could travel," her husband and coach, former American professional swimmer Shane Tusup, said.
    Tusup says swimming should be like other professional sports, where the biggest names appear far more often, and insists that a gruelling professional schedule can coexist with preparations for an Olympics or a world championship.
    "We wanted to take the onus off the Olympics. You don't need the Olympic gold to make your money," he said.
    "You don't need the Olympic gold to make your money. You don't need to have that to prove you're a professional, you can be a professional a whole different way than we ever saw - that's making money swimming. So, it's like a boxing match, you get paid to show up in the boxing ring."
    Hosszu won world championship golds for the 200m and the 400m medley and a bronze at the 200m butterfly in Barcelona in 2013.
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