Cseh Ready To Return To Arena In Time For Rome
Nov 17, 2008 - Craig Lord
Laszlo Cseh is waiting patiently in the drawing room of a swish boutique hotel on the Adriatic coast. Another aquatic VIP is a little late for dinner. No surprise to see that the Hungarian is coolness personified, no hint of irritation in his demeanour as he holds hands with girlfriend Diana. Cseh is used to biding his time.
Second thrice in Beijing, each time in a blistering European record, each time a performance that in a world without Mr Phelps would have elevated the Hungarian to superfish status. At home he is a hero. As Cseh puts it: "Everybody was very kind to me. Everyone congratulated me and said 'you are the first after the alien'.". The smile that follows is boyish. He is looking forward to his 23rd birthday next month.
To London 2012 too. He will be 26 by then and intends to be in the shape of his life and gunning for gold in events that may no longer feature the nemesis of every male swimmer in the world. Cseh will be wearing Arena. The busy man running late is Christiano Portas, head of the Italian suit maker who that evening will sit down with the swimmer, in the absence of lights and cameras, without any fuss, and renew a contract, for a further four years, with one of the most versatile athletes in history.
Smartly dressed, Cseh stands, extends a warm smile, a hand shake and the kind of courtesies that help to make him who he is. Well-balanced, well-educated, bright. An ambassador for self and sport. Swimming is such a lucky sport like that. A sport too that was dominated by the advent of hi-tech suits this year. Those signed up to one maker were high on advantage. Many panicked. Not Cseh.
"The first thing is to be clear in your mind. We saw the new suit. We saw the improvement that swimmers were making in it," the Hungarian recalls. "So, I said 'i need to try it - the full body'. I tried it and said 'no - I don't need the full body' because I got better movement without it using other suits. Then Arena made the new suit before the Olympics and they didn't have much time to develop but I think they did good work and when I tried that suit (Arena Revolution) on, I liked it. It makes swimming easier."
He is happy to acknowledge what was apparent to many but stated by few earlier in the year when the impact of technology in suits came under scrutiny. Lanky, lean and light, Cseh did not need a suit to anchor him, to give him core strength he did not have, to improve a poor body position in water. "No, I had a different feeling, a different experience. This new kind of material and [compression] lifts my legs up in the water and on 'fly and freestyle it feels much easier and very different." Cseh's English has improved greatly over the past few years and there are moments when his grammar and choice of words are as excellent as his explanations.
Years of hard work with coach Gyorgy Turi in Budapest and the spur of Olympic year were contributing factors. So was suit technology, that feeling of which Cseh speaks key to some of the big gains he made on the clock for his three silver linings: 200m butterfly, 2007 best, 1:57.13, Beijing 1:52.70; 400m medley, 2007 best, 4:09.63, Beijing, 4:06.16. But what of the 200m medley - 1:56.52 in China, 0.4sec better than his Melbourne 2007 swim?
"The 400m was good but by the 200m I was very tired. My time was good if you think about the programme and [point] at which I raced the 200. But the time was not so good as it could be. I feel I can go much, much better." A hint of one of his targets for Rome 2009, perhaps.
Cseh would like to stick to his Beijing 2008 programme, particularly because Mikey may have moved on to pastures new. "But I'm not sure. First, I have to start to train and then we'll see," says the European champion.
He will return to the fray in January after having taken the longest break of his career. Not that Cseh has been idle. First came the post-Beijing round of interviews, dinners, appearances and parties, then it was back to college to study computer sciences. "I don't have much time to go to the pool," said the swimmer. He has no clear idea how his studies might be applied in life beyond the sport when he eventually decides to retire. That, is not the point of studying: "After my swimming career I will decide. Now I need to learn something to feed the mind and then we'll see. It is not about just training body. It is important to train the brain."
Diana is enjoying having her beau around a little more often. The couple met in the most obvious place: at a swimming competition. "She was carrying the medals to the podium. I liked her. After racing I asked her if she wanted to go to the meet party with me. She said yes." The sweethearts look at each other and smile. They're well suited. In the restaurant, he plumps for steak, she prefers the pasta. Cseh gets the gold for polishing off his plate - and then brings the Hungarian relay home by finishing off Diana's pasta.
He's put on a few kilos since Beijing. He still looks lean and fit, and it won't take long to get back to ideal weight. Would the build up in January be a steady one? "No ... we don't have much time we have to make a quick return. That will be painful but its necessary and we need to do it," says Cseh. He enjoys training. Wouldn't do it if he didn't, though there are days, of course, when he thinks "I think I don't want to do this anymore ... it could be just a drill, but I like what I do and I like being with the [squad]. I like being in the water."
When he was 4 years old, Cseh's father, who lent his son the name Laszlo and a love of water - he was the first Hungarian to break the minute in the 100m backstroke - took him to the pool. Love at first site. "I always liked the water and liked swimming and learning to swim and I just wanted to stay in the water. I don't know whether there was a point when someone said that this boy can be good but we raced and I started to win a few races. There was a period when I was second and third in the Hungarian championships and I thought 'I can do better and I need to work harder.'"
He had plenty of inspiration around him: "I trained in the same pool as Krisztina Egerszegi and Karoly Guttler and always saw her and Karoly around. She was an absolute talent and super swimmer who worked very, very hard." She had a skimpy standard suit too - and clocked 2:06.62 in it over 200m back in 1991. It was great to see Kirsty Coventry go faster 17 years on but comparison between the Hungarian and any swim in the era of hi-tech bodysuit is impossible. As Cseh out it: "If she swam now, she would still be unbeatable because she was the talent of talents."
Cseh has his own fair share of talent and, like Egerszegi, had the capacity from a young age to understand that talent is not enough. Hard work is the key. His top tips for those who follow: hard work, concentration, more hard work. "In 2002 I made the breakthrough and swam my first really good 400m medley time." It earned him the European short-course crown. Since then there have been four Olympic, four world and 16 European medals. None of which has dented his desire to swim on.
"I'm motivated by being better. By earning places, winning medals, that's all. I feel now that I have earned a lot of [podium] places and have the three silvers from the Olympics. That motivates me a lot." Success breeds the desire for more of the same. And that includes harnessing the support of an entourage of people ready to help. Arena will lave him wanting for nothing when it comes t equipment along the way, while Cseh also relies on the support of Seat for transport and T-Mobile for free communication, via his iPhone.
To watch Cseh, to sit and talk to him is to meet the boy next door with a twist. He is pleasant, polite, presentable and good looking. You might image Coldplay as the most radical of bands on his playlist. You'd be in for a surprise. "I like heavy rock, metal. I had one song that I listened to before every race in Beijing. When I listened to it I imagined that I would swim really, really quick and fast and think 'I can do it'."
The tune was Bodies by the band Drowning Pool from their album Sinner. It has an anthemic, repetitive chorus of "Let the bodies hit the floor!" Aggression runs through it. Hard to imagine Cseh as being aggressive. The swimmer confirms a determined streak, however, and he is not afraid to show that hidden face to rivals. In the call room his purpose is to "focus on myself and my race, but I also try to look very very hard, as if to say 'you need to watch out for me'."
In the days before his big races in Beijing, Cseh kept himself to himself. "I swam only 1,000m a day - not too much - and stayed away from the main [race] pool. It's enough to swim in the warm-down pool or the Village pool and just do what you need to do. You have to concentrate and just be with [yourself]."
How would he fare on a desert island? Fine, it seems. He'd take a Star Wars book, listen to Limp Bizkit's Take a Look Around if he was allowed to have his iPod - and he'd want Diana there. Disallowed. We're talking desert island here. Stranded. Alone. "Ok, then my photo [camera]." But there'd just be one coconut tree and the horizon? He refuses to be defeated. "Yes, but maybe I'd have time to find the best position ever and win a photo prize if they let me [leave the island]."
He'd be happy to pay the price of isolation if there was a prospect of a prize at the end. So it is with Cseh in the water. Coach Turi is "fantastic". How so? "In the pool, the coach is a dictator but when we finish training he is a good friend. In training now I can say that I don't feel good and maybe we try some other drill, change something. Maybe I'm not right in what I'm saying and he knows better but we talk about what changes we need to make. I'm getting older and it is good to talk about thinbs. We tried before Beijing to change something [a change of emphasis in one part of his programme] and we did it and it worked. We risked something and that was successful."
He had read about Guttler's relationship with Laszlo Kiss, mentor to Egerszegi. Kiss had once related the story of how Guttler asked the coach to hit him hard across the face if he did not succeed in a certain set. Kiss obliged. Guttler said he was all the better for it. "I don't say [you should] always hit swimmers but maybe one time when the good timing [is right], it can produce a miracle," says Cseh before adding with a smile: "I would prefer it not to happen to me. I was hit when I was 13/14 but after that I swam faster." A ripple of laughter follows.
Cseh's is an interesting psychology. Balance runs through him. Asked to cite the best memories from Beijing and his career, he replies: "I have many memories. I can't chose one of them. All of my wins and swims have produced good memories and even the bad ones are good - because they are necessary if you want to get better."
Phelps says similar things, having spend his career in the hands of coach Bob Bowman's challenging ways. Ways that ensured that when the American's goggles filled with water in the 200m butterfly, he could still race on and win. Cseh, whose 200m 'fly was sensational, did not buy the story quite as it was told. "Everyone said that that was Michael Phelps's top swim [event]. No-one could can get close and he would be 2-3secs ahead. I don't think [his time] was [about] the water in [his] goggles ... it was just what he needed to say. At that moment, that was the time he was capable of. Maybe next time he can go better." Rome next July may be too soon to tell.
Cseh believed in his own capacity to go much faster and even cause upset in the 'fly when no-one expected it. "Before the Olympics, I thought I could get better ion butterfly. I thought that if I feel good on butterfly I could swim a big time. In the Olympics I was in good shape and I had help from the suit. It worked really well."
He and Diana are now looking to take a week-long break in the sun next month before the multiple European record holder turns his attentions to Rome. The journey will include a focus on improving his breaststroke. The aim is "not just to win", says Cseh. "I want to improve my times. That's the main aim, always." He hesitates, then, a very broad smile indeed spreading across his face, he adds: "Of course, I want to win too - always."
We never doubted it. In London 2012, he will want to bide his time no more at the end of a further four years of toil and challenge chasing that elusive Olympic gold.