Hungary gold medalist Hubert Kos: 'I always loved going to Ireland, Tayto crisps and stuff like that'
QUARTER IRISH: Hungary’s Hubert Kos with his gold medal after winning in the men’s 200m backstroke final. Pic: Peter Byrne/PA Wire.
Follow these Olympic Games with any sort of passing interest and you’re pretty much guaranteed to know that Team Ireland has already outstripped its best effort medal haul with seven podium places claimed or guaranteed.
Seven, that’s the number, right?
Mona McSharry and Daniel Wiffen (with two) in the pool. The combos of Daire Lynch/Philip Doyle and Paul O’Donovan/Fintan McCarthy in the rowing. That’s five. Rhys McClenaghan last Saturday and Kellie Harrington who fights for gold on Tuesday night. So, seven.
But what if we told you Ireland can lay claim to 7.25 medals in Paris?
It’s not a land grab. This particular piece of history was offered willingly last Thursday while our eyes were on Vaires-sur-Marne where Doyle and Lynch claimed bronze. And on Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. And the robbery of Daina Moorehouse in the ring.
In the midst of all that, Hubert Kos, a man born in Telki, a village 10km from Budapest, stood in the Paris La Defense Arena mixed zone having won the gold medal in the men’s 200m backstroke and all but dedicated a quarter of his success to these shores.
“My father is half-Irish, half-Hungarian,” he explained then. “So I’m technically 75% Hungarian, 25% Irish.”
Kos doesn’t know when exactly his Hungarian grandfather made the move to Ireland but it was decades ago. It was a time when the only real migration the island knew was the loss of its sons and daughters to England and America and other distant lands.
Bela Kos made a life for himself in Ireland.
His son Nickos was born and brought up there before he followed Bela back to Hungary where Hubert came into the world. The link is still strong, and not just because the 21-year old shares his middle name with a grandad who has since passed.
“So I’m really close with all my Irish cousins, even though it is hard to see them sometimes, especially with training and everything,” Hubert Kos told the Irish Examiner.
“Especially during Christmas holidays I love to go to Ireland, to Cork, just to be with the family.”
He still has family in Kerry and Dublin. Those Christmas trips have been a regular staple of the family diet through his lifetime with lunches at Hayfield Manor and trips to Smyths toy stores some of the memories he recalls with obvious fondness.
“That was my favourite Christmas, every time I went to Cork. I’ve been doing it since I was born. They were great. I always loved going to Ireland because I always got a little bit spoiled. I got to eat what I wanted to. Tayto crisps, and stuff like that.”
When it comes to Ireland, the man knows his onions. Cheese and onion, to be precise. “Exactly, the original! I always loved going there. I’m proud to be Irish as well.”
A keen golfer, he has played rounds at Waterville and other courses in Kerry but trips to Ireland have been harder to negotiate since adult life intervened and he swapped the comforts of home for life on scholarship in the USA.
Kos started life Stateside at Arizona State University, attracted by the presence of the legendary Bob Bowman who had developed the immortal Michael Phelps and done such key work with France’s Paris 2024 golden boy Leon Marchand.
The Hungarian was keen to test himself under Bowman, and with Marchand in training. Olympic champion Chase Kalisz was there too, but when Bowman announced a looming switch to the University of Texas – Rhasidat Adeleke’s college – Kos followed.
The US influence is clear in his American accent but his new life in Texas won’t start until later this month. He intends sticking around in Paris a bit longer, maybe for the closing ceremony, and then it's off home to the madness that will probably await.
Kos has heard that the country went “bananas” over his gold medal swim in the 200m backstroke. He won the same title at the World Championships in Fukuoka last year but the Olympic version is as different to that as gravy to goulash.
Wiffen spoke of the emotional toll winning a gold medal takes on an athlete after adding ‘only’ a 1500m bronze to the 800m earned six days earlier and Kos had similar issues in following up his own success in the 100m butterfly where he failed to make the final.
“Yeah, I’m not even surprised that that happened to me because winning for the first time… You can’t really place it anywhere. You don’t really know what to expect until you do it I because coming into the Olympics, people who haven’t swum in it before don’t know what to expect.
“I was able to go to Tokyo so I knew what I was in for, but I was so over the moon when that happened that I just couldn’t sleep or frame it anywhere. I didn’t know what just happened to me. It was just an incredible day and I wish I could have had an extra day of rest and I would have been able to get back a little bit to where I needed to.”
Like Wiffen, there is no sense of disappointment. He started swimming at three years of age. His whole life has been steered towards being an Olympic champion and he is one. Who knows what life might look like in four years’ time, he said.
"I might not be swimming the backstroke in four years. there might be another Leon Marchand coming around in four years, so you never know. You need to take what you can get."
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
