In what could be a serious blow to the financial mega-machine that Katinka Hosszu and her support team have built over the last 5 years, the Hungarian Olympic champion’s Facebook page has been deleted. The page, as of Thursday, had 503,000 followers.
While that is fewer followers than the 8.7 million amassed by global superstar Michael Phelps, it still sat as one of the largest followings on the social media platform. Other big names, and their followings:
- Nathan Adrian – 105k
- Natalie Coughlin – 115k
- Chad le Clos – 129k
- Katie Lededcky – 202k
- Missy Franklin – 235k
Hosszu’s following was even bigger than that of Balázs Dzsudzsák, the captain of the Hungarian Men’s National Soccer Team (107k) and the entire Hungarian Swimming Federation page (118k), showing what a massive and powerful marketing tool the page was. It was even bigger than the following of Hungary’s most famous soccer teams, like Ferencvarosi Torna Club (238k)
We first noticed the inaccessibility of the page on Thursday, shortly after Hosszu used it to announce a professional split with her coach/husband Shane Tusup (which he later confirmed to be a personal split as well). At the time, the page still appeared in search, but as of Friday, it has disappeared from search results as well.
In an Instagram post on Friday morning, Hosszu didn’t explicitly blame Tusup for the deletion, but did say that she did not delete it, and that Tusup was also a page administrator.
“Unfortunately my Facebook page has been deleted, Shane and I were managers of the page and I didn’t delete it…I’m working on the solution and hopefully I will be able to communicate with you guys there again too.” The message was posted in both English and Hungarian.
Hosszu is a 3-time Olympic Champion and 20-time World Champion. Her most recent successes come on winning the 100 back, 200 IM, and 400 IM at the 2016 Olympic Games and winning both the 200 and 400 IM for the 3rd-consecutive long course World Championship in front of a home crowd in Budapest last summer. She and Tusup swam together collegiately at USC, and he became her full-time coach shortly after finishing her collegiate swimming career.
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It must suck to have your ugly breakup on full display in the public eye.
??
HACKERS!!!
I’d rather hear the news about her swimming form. Is she swimming at Speedo this weekend?
She’s still listed on the psych sheet. We should find out more soon – the meet starts in the next hour or two.
She’s here
She just went 2:11.91 in the 200 IM
Will it be final tonight? Her best BS (before Shane 😀 ) time was 2:10.68