While filming with the Indiana swim team, SwimSwam caught up with 2024 NCAA Champion in the 1,650, Zalan Sarkany, who transferred to IU this year from Arizona State.
Sarkany makes it clear that while IU’s midseason competition is coming up at Ohio State next week, he is focused more on a few weeks from now when the Short Course World Championships will be held in his home city of Budapest. Being such a special meet, the Hungarian is hoping to make a podium or two in his distance specialties.
Sarkany also compares his time at Arizona State to Indiana, saying both were good but as he’s in Bloomington now, he feels he’s adjusting well to the training, team, and city.
Anyone
But
Texas
One of the few people I’ve heard say, “I love the weather” when talking about the MidWest. It’s nice now . . . get back to me in January and February.
Us Hungarians haven’t experienced proper winter in a decade. Maybe he will love it even more in January.
Northern Indiana gets lake-effect snow, but most of the state doesn’t get much. The last few years, we’ve had a handful of light snows, and temps get above freezing most days. It’s not Tempe, but it’s not Minnesota either.
The climate in the Northern half of Indiana is classified as humid continental; the lower half, where Bloomington is located, is classified as humid sub-tropical. What it comes down to is that in the cooler months northern Indiana snow sticks and piles up; southern Indiana snow melts relatively quickly and mud is often the flavor of the day. Don’t know where Hungarian climate fits on the continuum.
Hope he’s doing enough yards
Given how well Ahmed Hafnaoui developed during his time at IU, I think the distance program there will be just fine for him.
I wish him well during his journey.
You guys should’ve asked him about the anime edits he watches before his races
Glazing modge
Hearing that Indiana is similar to his training in Hungary is very promising. It felt like most of his improvement last year was from his fall semester over there
How deep will the distance fields be at SC Worlds?
They were very meh during the World Cup series.
From watching US college swimming it seems those elites that aren’t retired or resting are going
One of the distance swimmers on the US team is his former ASU teammate Daniel Matheson.
Yeah, but when you see what they did in Paris… 800 free prelims was insane.
I think that’s a function of the WC format not being that friendly to distance swimmers and the fall typically being a time that distance athletes are doing a lot of higher volume, lower intensity weeks. Post-Olympics we’re definitely not going to see a full slate of elite distance swimmers, but it should be a lot better turnout than WCs (I hope).