2025 HUNGARIAN NATIONAL SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Wednesday, April 9th – Saturday, April 12th
- Prelims at 9am local (3am ET)/Finals at 5pm local (11am ET)
- Csik Ferenc Swimming Pool, Kaposvar, Hungary
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- SwimSwam Preview
- Day 1 Prelims Recap/Day 1 Finals Recap
- Day 2 Prelims Recap
- Entries/Live Results
- Livestream (Prelims Only)
Night two of the 2025 Hungarian National Swimming Championships brought the fireworks, with two national records going down by the time all was said and done.
22-year-old Texas Longhorn Hubert Ko kicked off the impressive session with a shiny new Hungarian standard of 52.24 in the men’s 100m backstroke. You can read more about his scorching performance here.
Later on, the men’s 400m freestyle national record went down at the hands of open water ace Kristof Rasovszky.
28-year-old Rasovszky stopped the clock at a super swift result of 3:45.32, getting to the wall over 2 seconds ahead of his competitors.
Top-seeded Zalan Sarkany, Indiana’s 1650y freestyle NCAA champion, touched in 3:47.73 for silver while David Betlehem rounded out the podium in 3:47.86.
Rasovszky’s stunner tonight rewrote a supersuited record, beating the former Hungarian benchmark of 3:45.68 Gergo Kis put on the books at the 2009 World Championsips.
Entering this competition, Rasovszky’s personal best rested at the 3:46.56 he established during the prelims of the event at the 2023 World Championships. That means he hacked over a second off that former PB to become the speediest Hungarian ever.
Splits for Rasovszky’s 3:45.32 Hungarian Record
Both Rasovszky and silver medalist Sarkany cleared the World Aquatics ‘A’ cut of 3:48.15 needed to add the event to their lineups for Singapore.
Furthermore, veteran Rasovszky now checks in as the #2 performer on the globe at the moment, sitting only behind Australian Olympian Sam Short who ripped a world-leading 3:43.84 at the Pro Swim Series in Sacramento last week.
2024-2025 LCM Men 400 Free
SHORT
3:43.84
| 2 | Kristóf RASOVSZKY | HUN | 3:45.32 | 04/10 |
| 3 | Kim Woomin | KOR | 3:45.54 | 03/28 |
| 4 | Carson FOSTER | USA | 3:46.42 | 03/06 |
| 5 | Guilherme COSTA | BRA | 3:46.74 | 03/06 |
Rasovszky is a two-time Olympic medalist, having reaped 10k open water silver at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, upgrading to gold last year at the Paris Games.
Any possibility left for Bethlehem to return to NCState?
There’s no need: he can continue training with Rasovszky in Budapest, where there are plenty of good universities to further his studies as well. Plus Bettina Fabian is back in Budapest as well, the two seem to be a tight unit. Not all Hungarian talents need to leave for the US. Just my opinion, but that boat has sailed…
He stated that the 400 will be his main pool event going forward, and plans to final in it at Worlds. He’s clearly taking that goal seriously.
10k and 400 free, that’s some very different racing requirements, interesting to see how he can make them both work. As you say though, this result indicates he’s going to manage the 2 just fine.
It’s funny that he’s better at the 10k and the 400 than Betlehem, but significantly slower in the 1500.
Actually not too odd to combine mid distance and OW rather than 1500/OW. Notably Ferry Weertman swam on the dutch 4×200 team without competing in the 1500 while he was in his 10K prime.
I feel the higher speed from mid distance can translate better to a strong sprint finish than 1500.
Your logic is precisely correct, in reality – elite at both is much harder to achieve by the masses. Ferry was a very special athlete as is Razovszky (in my opinion).