Hungarian swimmer wins three gold medals at Finswimming World Cup in Poznań

Petra Senánszky, the 22-year-old swimmer from Debrecen won three gold medals in 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle at Poznań Finswimming World Cup last week.

Unfortunately, finswimming is a non-Olympic discipline and athletes excelling in these sports usually do not receive as much attention as their counterparts competing in Olympic sports.

Petra won her first world championship title in 2011, (she has since won five more). At 2015 World Championships in China she won gold medal in 100-meter freestyle (46.89 seconds) breaking the previous world record.

Petra’s career started 14 years ago when her parents took her to a Debrecen diving club.

As a young girl Petra fell in love with the look of the fins as they reminded her to the figure of a mermaid, the legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish.

She trains two times a day. The morning workout starts at six o’clock and lasts for one and a half hours; after that, she takes a brief rest then, a two and a half hours conditioning and swimming session follows, which lasts until roughly half past four. If there are competitions during this period, this schedule goes on during weekends as well.