Kristóf Milák won his own and Hungary's second gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly at the home swimming world championships, this time beating the world's best in the 100-meter.
The 22-year-old Hungarian competitor - who defended his title with a fantastic world record in the 200 meters on Tuesday - now crossed the finish line with a time of 50.14 seconds, thus securing himself and the Hungarian delegation's second gold in the competition.
Caeleb Dressel in this event in the Tokyo Olympic finals , who beat Milák, who swam the European record, behind him with a world record. from further struggles and traveled home.
In Dressel's absence, Milák was just as dominant in the preliminaries and semi-finals as he was in the 200. He crossed the finish line in his second swim with a time of 50.14 seconds, only his European record (49.68) achieved in the Japanese capital was faster in his career.
In the final, Milák started stronger than in the semi-final, he was more than three tenths of a second faster at the halfway point, but this time he slowed down by roughly the same amount in the second length, so he reached the century mark with the same time, 50.14, eight tenths ahead of silver medalist Naoki Mizunoma of Japan .
Milák himself won his third, and the 34th world championship gold in the history of Hungarian swimming. He is the fourth Hungarian male swimmer who won the double within one world championship, András Hargitay won the 200 and 400 meters medley in Cali in 1975, Tamás Darnyi accomplished this feat in Madrid in 1986 and Perth in 1991, Norbert Rózsa won the 100 and 200 meters mellen was able to stand on top of the podium in Rome in 1994.
Milák is the third male competitor to win both the 100 and 200 meter butterfly at a World Championship, the American Michael Phelps in 2007 and 2011, and the South African Chad Le Clos in 2013 did the double, and he also won the water sports - combined - the 100th Hungarian world championship medal in the history of the five disciplines, of which this was the 40th gold medal, and the 80th medal in swimming.
"I wanted to compete well, and I got that, but neither the first nor the second 50 was as fast as I wanted. Now that was good for that. It would certainly have been nice to have someone else by my side, but this was already my seventh day, I'm human too, I'm a little tired," said the 22-year-old Olympic champion. "Overall, I am satisfied with the World Cup, the organization, and the fact that we can be here. I hope we have another opportunity like this, but if not, we will meet in 2027," said the Honvéd veteran, who added that he will have about five days of rest, after which he will prepare full steam ahead for the European Championships in Rome in August, where he wants to achieve similar success.
As usual, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán praised Kristóf Milák's performance on his social media page:
"The tomato turned red, not yellow, Kristóf Milák is the shark of the swimming pool!"
Source and cover image: Magyar Hírlap/Róbert Hegedűs
