Three-time Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu will serve as an official ambassador to the International Swimming League and will own her own team, the Iron Lady and ISL founder Konstantin Grigorishin announced in a joint press conference.
“We are heading forward to an exciting period, I am happy to participate in the changes of my sport. Earlier I already mentioned some issues and fields to be improved. For me it was always significant to promote the swimmers’ interest, since we are the most important players in this sport,” Hosszu said. “Konstantin and his ISL stand for the same values about the future of swimming as me. We both believe that there are many new opportunities in swimming that can be developed for the sport by working with committed and experienced professionals.”
In addition to her role as an ambassador, Hosszu will own her own team in the upcoming series.
“It is an honor, but also a responsibility to be the leader of one of the European teams,” Hosszu said. “Being a team owner requires a totally different way of thinking, since besides focusing on my race and performance, it’s my responsibility to put together a team, in which the members cooperate well, and I also have to develop the best strategy.”
Her team, Iron Swim Budapest, is currently scheduled to compete in front of its home crowd in the last weekend of October. The team will have both Hungarian and international swimmers.
“It is a special pleasure for me that I could compete in front of the home crowd again,” she said. “I think that Budapest starts to become an emblematic venue of the swimming world and as a swimmer and as a Hungarian person, I am very proud of it.”
The International Swimming League is a SwimSwam partner.
Katinka is athinkin pretty smart. This lady is very bright and talented. I say you go girl!!!!
Hosszu is not a girl for long time already. I don’t know how much of lady she is but she is hypocritical enough to run a business around competitive swimming. She with her ex-husband started already this iron aquatic stuff and I never heard from swimswam how successful this initiative was. What she is doing now she moves her business under ISL’s very popular nowadays umbrella. Nothing romantic – strictly business. Read between lines.
Oh I almost forgot – She is hot also! Smart, cutthroat, gorgeous and savvy…the most eligible lady in Europe!!!
Strictly business, sure. What’s wrong with that?
Not too much fellow can live from what he knows and likes the best.
This is very good that there will be an alternative to FINA events. In the US, the unions for the the professional sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) get the players ~50% of the total revenue for the players salaries. It makes one wonder what the IOC, USOC, FINA, US Swimming, FIFA, NCAA etc do with all the money that is generated from advertisements, broadcast rights and gate receipts.
It is time that the the workers get paid, not the administrators, coaches and the governing bodies.
I was not a national team-level swimmer, but I certainly never thought of myself as a “worker.” Different era I guess–I actually bought into the well-rounded ideal of athletics, academics and sportsmanship.
Mike, competitive swimmers are not painters or writers or musicians who does need much of assistance from other professionals to do their creative job. A swimmer needs a pool with maintenance crew, coaching team, equipment, officials, rules keepers, meet organizers, team managers, etc. You should understand that as soon a swimmer makes decent earnings he/she will pay much more to everybody who are involved in assistance job. Everybody will want to get a piece of this pie. For those who are nor able to earn big bucks by swimming the sport of swimming will become expensive.
Depends on the country and possibilities, too. E.g. In Hungary nowadays an Olympic Champion receives 35 million HUF/ gold from the country, more precisely from us once (silver 25, bronze 20, 4.: 15, 5.: 10, 6.: 8, 7.: 4, 8.: 2) plus gets perpetuity from 35 years of age, that is 325k (the same as average salary) 195k, and 130k / gold, silver, bronze / months at the moment. And they have more possibilities eg. Athlete of the Nation award with 630k/months after 60 years of age.
The coaches of a champion also earns money e.g. their rente is 50 % of the athletes.
The clubs also get after them, etc.
And of course there are money… Read more »
Thats what the other 50% is for: overhead and administration. The governing bodies have been taking too much to support themselves. Olympic sports have a history of amateurism, but those days are long past. Professional sports are entertainment businesses and will be run like business; elite swimming is a business.
I think the NCAA is probably the worst offender with the money they generate with football and basketball. One of the NCAA’s arguments for not paying the players is the money is used to support other sports (e.g., swimming). However, if that were true all the coaches would also would be paid the same across all sports, just like all the athletes are paid the same with their scholarships. … Read more »
Mike C – I think you make a lot of good points. And the last one is a great one. The big moral question for the NCAA is: do the sports stay as popular as they are if you disconnect them from the colleges? Minor league baseball does ok, but I would guess NCAA football is more popular, because of the mentality that ‘these athletes chose this school for the same reasons I did, they’re like me, their wins are my wins’ (which we know at the big time programs is not really true).
Maybe the schools can pull out the sports teams and make them for-profit business, subject to GAAP and IRS rules for business.
I look forward to the day all the players in the BCS, Football Bowls and NCAA BBall tournament realize they have all the leverage. They could strike/sickout for 50% of the revenue the day before the game start.. What is the NCAA gong to do – take away their scholarships?
I think players deserve more. I also think that them getting payed what is their fair share and treating them as professional athletes with bargaining power will be the beginning of the end of the collegiate athletics juggernaut, because I just don’t think that fans are really that interested in watching would then become minor league football. At least not enough to fill the 100,000 seat stadiums. Alabama loses a lot of its marketing appeal if it’s explicitly a farm team for the NFL.
I don’t have the answers for how to reconcile those two things. I don’t believe that the latter statement is a justification for not paying them. But, I do think that’s a reality that the NCAA… Read more »
So Hosszu is getting into FINA’s shoes. Let’s see how much she pays swimmers of her club and how much leaves for herself. I was sure that this “iron lady” business was an invitation of Shane Tusup and it looks that Katinka got taste of it. The exploitation of a swimmer can be profitable.
*innovation
I think herself means club and of course nothing to do with FINA shoes. Money paid by ISL is public and a swimmer has 12 possibilities, clubs in this case. She/he can choose the best according to teammates, mmanagement, money, etc.
Exploitation? It was a joke?
Who is this Konstantin Grigorishin? How has he made his billions? Is he a philanthropist – a blessing to the sport of swimming? Or there is something more prosaic behind the scenes. Money, money, money… FINA being run by very business incompetent bureaucrats is one of the weakest link in the chain of international sports. There’s no surprise that it got targeted by “New Russians”. Why is he running such important meetings wearing t-shorts? First it was signing contract with Pellegrini and now with Hosszu. Is it that all this ISL business competing with not that big FINA’s budget is just to get fun for him? And look how well dressed Hosszu is in contrast to him? For her that… Read more »
Yozhik, who is Abramovich, Kroenke, Usmanov, Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Glazer, nasser Al-Khelaifi, Grigorishin, etc. Is it important? Me not. Of course I know who they are but just for imformation.
Where would be some sports without Mateschitz?
And as you see, they are not only Russians.
About billions: look for what Rockefeller said about his 1st million. Or read the story of Apple, Facebook, or nearly any other global companies. Basicly no differencies.
This press conference was in Budapest, I read nearly all the stories about this in Hungarian. KG met with Wladar and Orban, too. Big deal.
Money? Of course, but according to my opinion that’s not so bad. Financing sports instead of… Read more »
So you are suggesting that Peaty, Sjostrom, Le Clos and many other top athletes are just up to a massive slavery conspiracy. You are not serious dude.
Peaty, Sjostrom, Le Clos and many other top athletes do not own anything in ISL. They are selling their job and will get whatever will be paid because it hopefully will be more than thay can get from FINA. They are not in the control. Hosszu wants to be in the control of this business and it looks like this is her major interest in ISL: not get well paid by swimming but get well profited from owning the business. In this case she would be an employer and all mentioned by you swimmers will be employees.
Any business that is looking for profit is based on greed. This is the moving force: to get more. Unless employer is… Read more »
You’re unbeliveable.
Sjostrom and Le Clos are swimming in Energy Standard, the 1st, the peak club in ISL. They are the employees what you mentioned.
I don’t know how you find out what Hosszu wants, perhaps you had a nightmare.
Hosszu hasn’t got any ownership in ISL, she has her own swimming club with coaches, independent management, training facilities, etc., and more than one hundred swimmers. That is running by herself (nothing to do with Tusup, please do not mention him again) and was made well before ISL.
As I wrote all of the free swimmers’ salary is forced to increase because of the competition condition, perhaps you missed it, I don’t know why.
Of… Read more »
Sometimes when people are too close to the events they may miss the bigger picture. You worship Hosszu because she is Hungarian. Should she be from some other place far away from your country then you hardly paid attention to her activities. Sorry if I hurt your patriotic fillings. But since you are close to Hungarian news can you tell us how successful her club business is as business enterprise and as a swimming club. Is the membership in this club expensive or about an average in the town? Is the interest in it solely based on her popularity in Hungary or swimmers pay money to be there because they expect to be a better swimmers. Please tell us how… Read more »
I idolize her achivement and not herself, just as any other Champions, WR holders, etc. in any sports that I mainly interested in (e.g. basketball or rallying). Icing on the cake that she’s Hungarian.
I don’t know too much about her business, I live 250 km from Budapest. As I can read, it’s public, I’ve to tell it’s an average price swimming club (https://ironswim.hu/).
Not so easy to understand it nowadays what’s going on here, especially for a non Hungarian citizen.
At first her club is nearly the only pure swimming club. The others have athletes in different water sports and different sports too.
We have TAO support. Simply, as… Read more »