By Sofia Altavilla on SwimSwam
During the Short Course World Championships in Budapest, the Polish Swimming Federation held a press conference to hand out the upcoming 2025 Short Course European Championships in Poland. Among the attendees there were Olympic and World multi-medalists Otylia Jedrzejczak (Poland) and Laszlo Cseh (Hungary).
The Evolution of the Individual Medley
Given the many highlights on the first day of competition in Budapest, including an exciting 200m individual medley final, which saw Shaine Casas going under Ryan Lochte’s American record, we asked Laszlo what he thought about the performances and the evolution of the IM events. His response could be summed up with the sentence, “Once upon a time, there were there were back-fly-free specialists and then breastroker.”
Especially nowadays, with the rise of Leon Marchand, who is as much a flyer as a breaststroker, and also considering yesterday’s podium, which featured three swimmers—Shaine Casas, Alberto Razzetti, and Finlay Knox—who all swim an excellent third 50m, the Hungarian champion wondered what has changed now compared to 5 or 10 years ago. The answer he gave himself (and us) lies in the fact that, in back at his day, the two class of swimmers— fly-back-freestylers and breaststrokers—didn’t overlap. Those who swam the 200m/400m IM were often the same swimmers who belonged to one class or the other . There were almost no medley specialists who were also strong breaststroke swimmers, and if there were, it wasn’t the normality at the time. Now, however, one has to be an excellent swimmer in all four strokes, with no exceptions.
” You have no chance with a bad breastroke.”
World Records on the First Day of Racing
“If someone sets a record today, it doesn’t mean that someone else won’t break it tomorrow,” this is how the Hungarian legend introduces the talk about world records set on the first day at the Duna Arena. Laszlo Cseh, who emphasizes that he doesn’t have favorite swimmers but simply enjoys a good race, stated that the performances he liked most on the record-breaking Tuesday (when 7 world records were broken) were in the 50m butterfly. The former Hungarian swimmer pointed out how amazed he was by the ease with which Gretchen Walsh and Noe Ponti have been lowering the limits of the sport. “In the 50m, it’s very difficult to set personal records because the distances are so short, especially in short course, that the margin for improvement becomes smaller and smaller.” It’s a bit like the story of Achilles, who will always get closer to the tortoise, but it happens asymptotically: the shorter the distance, the smaller the gains with each attempt. Therefore, Laszlo finds it incredible to see improvements of nearly 0.4 seconds in the 50m butterfly. “In the end, it’s just a dive and a few strokes.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: “Nowadays You Don’t Have A Chance With A Bad Breastroke In IM” – Laszlo Cseh On SCM Worlds