Kristóf Milák wins Hungary's first silver medal in Paris

Kristóf Milák was unable to defend his title in the 200m butterfly on Wednesday at the Paris Olympics. Among Hungarian male swimmers, Tamás Darnyi remains the only one who has been able to achieve this feat.

Milák qualified for the final with the best time, but his challenger was France's Leon Marchand, who had already won a gold medal in the 400 medley. Speaking on Sunday, the Frenchman said that he was relieved from a major pressure because everyone was expecting him to win a gold medal at the Olympics. Having won his first, the stakes were not as high for him going forward.

The French press described Milák as Marchand's boogeyman, although they knew full well that he missed a lot of his training during preparation. And yet, drawing any conclusions from that was pointless. When speculating about their odds, what Csaba Sós, head coach of the Hungarian swimming team said before the Olympics was often brought up, namely that the two of them are the only ones who can finish under 1:52, so a duel between them was quite likely.

Prior to the race, Milák was sitting in the call room, where this time the camera was allowed in, with his characteristic impassive attitude. He walked to the starting block with a blank face and looked around thoughtfully – while the home crowd went wild as Leon Marchand was preparing to swim next to him in lane five.

They both got off to an equally good start, with Milák turning first at fifty meters, leading by half a length, 64 hundredths to be exact. He maintained that lead until the halfway point, and continued to move superbly during the third fifty as well, 72 hundredths ahead of his rival.

Marchand then launched into a major chase, catching up to the Hungarian 25 meters before the finish, and left him behind in the final few meters. The winning time was 1:51.21, Milák stopped the clock at 1:51.75. Marchand is also aiming to win the 200m breaststroke.

Milák's preparation was quite unorthodox, with the team captain saying in December that he was likely in catastrophic shape. By the time of the Olympics, Sós refined this statement. He said that in the sixty years he had spent in the sport, he had never seen anything like this: that someone could swim like this without completing the classic training process in the pool.