Hungarian swimmer Bence Király has had a successful career during his three years on the Utah swim team. Going into his senior year he shows promising results, starting off strong by putting in top ten NCAA Championship times.
Earlier this month, Király and his team headed to Cal and Stanford, where he swam both the 500- and 1000-yard freestyle races. Being the first dual meet to count towards the NCAA, Király’s performance was one for the books.
He now holds the fastest time in Pac-12 this year for the 1000 free with a time of 9:07.93.
“It’s the fastest he has ever swam earlier in the season — he had a pretty remarkable week of racing,” said head coach Joe Dykstra.
Király is happy with where he is this early in the season.
“Unfortunately, I pretty much started from scratch because I took some time off this summer, but I am back to the way I was last year,” Király said.
To say he’s back to where he was last season is impressive, to say the least. Király had an incredible season last year, hitting best times in most of his events, such as the 50-, 200-, 500-, and 1650-yard freestyle, as well as the 100-yard fly.
In his best event, the 1650 free, he finished 14:41.86 — not only setting a personal record for himself, but also placing fourth at the NCAA Championships. Though this seems like a great place, he isn’t settling; he will be gunning for a top-three performance at the NCAA’s this season and would like to make finals in another event.
Along with the 1000 and 1650 free, another event Király has been excelling at is the 500 free. He placed 12th in this event last year at the NCAAs, but wants more for this upcoming season.
“I want to make the A final in this event, which is top eight,” Király said. “I like the 500 the most; it’s just my event.”
As for his team, Király and Dykstra hope for the best after some of their top swimmers graduate.
“We are working on it and it’s getting there, but we have a lot of new swimmers so we will see,” said Király. “We are a little thin in sprinting after Nick [Soedel] and Alex Fernandes, who also graduated last year. We have both Paul Ungur and Daniel McArthur who can both sprint freestyle, but for these first few swim meets of men’s sprinting, it’s going to be a little makeshift.”
Up next for the Utes, the men’s team will stay home and host its next meet against UNLV (Nov. 7) as the women’s team will host its next three meets at home — Boise State and Florida Gulf Coast (Oct. 30), and U.C. Davis (Nov. 6).
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