2021 FINA WORLD CUP STOP #2 – BUDAPEST
- Thursday, October 7th – Saturday, October 9th
- Duna Arena, Budapest, Hungary
- SCM (25m)
- Day 1 Start Lists
- Results
The second leg of this year’s FINA World Cup is set for Duna Arena in Budapest, with 2021 marking the fourth year in a row the city has hosted an event leg of the annual series.
The field on both the men’s and women’s sides are carrying over from the first stop in Berlin, for the most part, although a notable addition is Hungarian world record holder Kristof Milak.
21-year-old Milak is opting out of his pet event of the 200m fly and instead is entered the 50m/100m/200 free, the 50m back and the 50m/100m fly events.
As we reported, Milak recently changed up his coach after having been with his previous mentor Atilla Selmeci. He is now training under Balázs Virth, coach of world champion Boglarka Kapas and retired Olympic gold medalist Daniel Gyurta.
Milak’s entry into the 200m free adds extra drama to an already-blue ribbon race between Aussie star Kyle Chalmers and young gun Matt Sates of South Africa.
Last week in Berlin we saw Chalmers and Sates battle to the wall, with 18-year-old Sates ultimately getting the win in a new lifetime best and World Junior Record of 1:40.65. Chalmers was right behind, posting the first sub-1:41 outing of his own prolific career in 1:40.82, a time only .02 off of the Australian national record.
Sates was also a head-turner in the 200m IM, with the University of Georgia-bound teen posting a World Junior Record in that event of 1:51.45.
Of note, Israeli money leader on the women’s side after Berlin, Anastasia Gorbenko, is not entered in this 2nd stop.
Milak 200 fly 1.46.5 , new WR
I was not that impressed with Milak’s freestyle from a technical standpoint at Euros. However, I could see it being better in short course due to his underwater speed.
Milak does not have great underwaters. They’ve improved but are not great
He was basically even or better than everyone in the 100 Fly field at the Olympics underwater outside of Dressel who we all know is in a different stratosphere.
I think doing underwaters in LCM 100 fly is much easier than 200 scm free.
Though they make a lot more difference in the 200s fr
Milak kinda reminds me of Phelps in his insane ability to hold stroke and speed in the 35 – 50m segment of a LCM length.
It’s obviously super important in LCM, but less so in SCM, where raw explosiveness is more important (a la Dressel, say).
It’s why I think that 2007/08 Phelps may have not been as insane in SCM as his monster underwaters might suggest.
Then again, I though Agnel wouldn’t be as great SCM and then he pops a 3:32 400 so who knows. Talent like that still gonna be insane whatever the length of the pool is.
Milak, coming back from his Tokyo legendary 100 fly, will certainly focus more on sprinting than on endurance. From today’s matches, his reaction time was ok and he broke his PB in both. I think he will learn with all these SC competitions how to improve his speed.
He has a weird bilateral breathing pattern for the first 150, then switches to one side for the last 50. I don’t understand why someone at his level is/should be doing bilateral breathing in a race.
There are a lot of aspects of his race that he could clean up and I hope the move to the new coach will help. For one, he needs to figure out a better flat start, which is much easier said than done. Bowman couldn’t ever seem to figure it out for Phelps, and I doubt it was from a lack of trying.
Why shouldn’t they do some bilateral breathing? It is a lot smoother than a lot of American swimmers freestylers atm.
Milak’s Short course 200 free PB is 1:44.
Chalmers 1.39.5 in budapest, gold in paris
In 3 years time?
Maybe only ‘fool’s gold’
No way he goes faster than Agnel.
There’s at least 8 people at this moment in time that I would have as more likely to win 200 free gold in Paris than Chalmers.
(For the record, I’d have the entire Tokyo 200 free final bar maybe Rapsys, then Kristof Milak, Matt Richards, Thomas Neill and the ghost of Sun Yang).