Hosszu Steps Onto Block 12 Times, Hagino Earns 2x Gold On Bergen Day 2

2016 BERGEN SWIM FESTIVAL

• Friday, May 27th – Sunday, May 29th
• Alexander Dale Oen Arena, Bergen, Norway
• Friday – prelims at 3pm local/9am EDT; Saturday – prelims at 9am local/3am EDT, finals 5pm local/11am EDT; Sunday – prelims at 9am local/3am EDT, finals at 3pm local/9am EDT
• Event Schedule
• Entry Lists
• Live Timing
• Results

After making her presence in Bergen known by racing to top seeds in 4 of her 5 consecutive prelim races last night, Hungarian World Champion Katinka Hosszu erupted once again during the Swim Festival’s first finals session tonight.

With the knock-out style of both the 50m freestyle and 50m butterfly events, Hosszu topped even her own monster-schedule of meets past with tonight’s outing. By my count, the #IronLady’s total number of swims on the night rang in at a whopping 12, assuming she raced the women’s 200m backstroke for which results are still unavailable at time of publishing.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that Hosszu nabbed at least five gold medals in the process, again after rushing immediately to Bergen from her 400 IM appearance at Romanian Nationals just a few days ago. Hosszu’s golds came in the sprint 50m distance of both the 50m freestyle and 50m butterfly, where, after 3 rounds, she managed to come out on top of the series of splashes n’ dashes. Her results in each series are below:

50 Freestyle – Katinka Hosszu
Round 1 – 25.76
Round 2 – 26.13
Round 3 – 25.66, Gold

50 Butterfly – Katinka Hosszu
Round 1 – 27.65
Round 2 – 27.54
Round 3 – 27.65, Gold

Hosszu also scored gold in the women’s 200m freestyle as the only woman to dip under the 2-minute threshold, clocking a 1:59.77 for the top prize. The 100m backstroke was her next victim, as Hosszu touched in 1:00.80, well ahead of home swimmer Eyglo Gustafsdottir who earned silver in 1:02.13.

Hosszu’s siege continued into the 200m butterfly event, where the Hungarian was able to out-swim the reigning World Champion, Natsumi Hoshi. Hosszu stopped the clock at 2:10.50 to Hoshi’s 2:11.73. Hoshi’s time from Kazan was 2:05.56, so her result tonight was most likely a result of where 25-year old is at in her training less than 75 days out from Rio.

The women’s 100m breaststroke was another final with the #IronLady as a competitor, however, as her last event, she most likely used the race as more of a warm-down swim. 1:13.75 is what Hosszu clocked in the race for 8th place, well outside of winner Hrafnhildur Luthersdottir‘s gold medal-earning 1:07.74.

*Note, the women’s 200m backstroke event results were not available at time of publishing. Hosszu earned the top seed from prelims in a time of 2:15.28.

Another marquis swimmer made his mark in tonight’s finals, as Japan’s multi-event weapon, Kosuke Hagino, raced his way to the top of the podium in 2 events. Hagino was untouchable in the men’s 200m freestyle in Bergen tonight, wrangling in a mark of 1:47.00. The time was just .05 faster than his 1:47.05 prelim from last night and is a ways off his 1:45.50, the world’s 3rd fastest time he threw down at the Japan Open in April. As with Hoshi, however, Hagino is in the midst of his last training surge before the Olympics, so he’ll be saving his potential best times for then.

Interestingly, Hagino also swam the 200m backstroke, destroying the field in a time of 1:56.82. The next best swimmer was over 5 seconds behind, so Hagino scored the world’s 15th-fastest time uncontested. The 21-year old actually owns 8th-fastest time in the world from the 1:56.10 he threw down at the Konami Open in February, so tonight’s outing was just over a half a second off that impressive mark.

At one time, Hagino had tossed around the idea of competing in the 200m backstroke at his Trials and the Rio Olympic Games, but ultimately decided to tackle the 200m IM, 400m IM and 200m freestyle events as his individual schedule. However, the fact that he can clock times in the world’s top 20 without the 200m backstroke event as his primary focus is further evidence that the man is a multi-dimensional threat.