Laszlo Cseh produced a shuddering performance in the 200m butterfly to send a shot across the bows of Michael Phelps and Chad Le Clos on another glittering night for arena at the European Championships in London.
Wearing the arena Powerskin Carbon-Air, Laszlo produced the second fastest time in a textile suit in history, second behind only Phelps and faster than fellow arena swimmer Chad Le Clos.
Laszlo was in a world of his own, winning in a championship record of 1min 52.91secs, 2.44secs ahead of another arena athlete, Viktor Bromer of Denmark in second.
For the 30-year-old, though, there was plenty to work on ahead of the big one in the summer.
“I wanted to break my European record from 2008“ he said. “I lacked some things to achieve that but it’s all fine as I know I am far away from my peak”.
“If I arrived in Rio in this shape I would be utterly disappointed.”
That was one of a number of golden moments for arena with Laszlo’s fellow Hungarian and arena athelete Katinka Hosszu also in the medals.
Katinka won two more golds as well as one silver medal last night.
Katinka set a new championship record of 2:07.30 with an emphatic victory in the 200m individual medley with fellow arena swimmer Hannah Miley in third.
She returned for the 100m backstroke, in which she shared first place with Mie Nielson at the Europeans in Berlin two years ago.
This time Mie claimed an outright victory and had the top of the podium to herself, setting a third straight championship record of 58.73.
The Danish swimmer said: “I’m happy with the time. I did not expect to go under 59 seconds”.
“I could swim my own race in front of the field and that helped.”
Katinka took part in the last event of the night and amongst her Hungarian teammates, won a thrilling 4x200m freestyle relay with the Netherlands in third.
Katinka beamed: “My tactics were to go out as fast as possible but I knew that the end was going to hurt”
“This is by far my favourite medal in these Europeans.”
In the same race, Sarah Sjostrom set a championship record of 1:55.30 on the opening leg for Sweden.
Marco Koch was second in a thrilling 200m breaststroke, the world champion touched out by just 0.07secs in 2:08.40.
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