Athlete of the Year Gala: Kristóf Milák was expecting himself in second place

Then, at Monday's gala, it turned out that there are times when, despite the victory, the words are lost.

Three icons made it to the top three in the Male Athlete of the Year category, but only Milák was at the Opera. Short-track speed skater Shaoang Liu is training in China for known reasons, while fencer Áron Szilágyi is in London.

When presenting him, Milák walked up the stage quite timidly and waved to the audience. And not even the fact comforted him that award presenters Ádám Schmidt, Secretary of State for Sports of the Ministry of Human Resources, and Sándor Wladár, the Olympic champion in Moscow and President of the Hungarian Swimming Federation, took the podium: the two missing athletes will not be playing a role this time, and Kristóf Milák will take home the trophy.

After his World Championship gold and world record in 2019, Milák once again deserved the award – the difference between the two years is that Attila Selmeci coached the swimming phenom at the time, while last year he was coached by Balázs Virth. Of course, another difference is that while Milák "only" won one World Championship gold medal in Gwangju, in 2022, he won the 100 and 200 butterfly in the Duna Aréna, and then added three European Championship titles and two silver medals in Rome in August.

And what do these two successes have in common? The world record: it is Kristóf Milák's times that make him the swimmer of the era.

"I was lucky to have had a good and successful year, although it took more than just luck," said Milák. "What I want, what I think about myself is usually more than what I actually achieve. I always look to the future, but nowadays, I try to live the present more and more and appreciate what I am achieving."

In any case, sports journalists appreciate what Kristóf Milák has achieved, and sometimes it surprises him as well - as it did on Monday when the Olympic, World and European champion swimmer told Nemzeti Sport that this was one of the reasons why he interrupted his speech after a few sentences, and then, after a long silence, quickly closed it with the usual acknowledgment.

"I had mixed feelings about whether I would win or not, but with both feet on the ground, I thought I could only come second this time," Milák said, referring to the fact that he had beaten an Olympic champion in the poll this year. “I really didn't think I was going to take home the trophy, and therefore, I didn't have any message or any thought that I wanted to pass on. Or one that I could have delivered well. And then, yes, I was surprised.”

As long as Milák only feels this way on stage, it's fine. Knowing him, of course, he can't be awkward in the pool, where he always knows what to do, and he does it very quickly. And even though the BHSE swimmer said after Monday's gala that he tries to live in the moment, he didn't deny himself, because he immediately looked to the future:

"What will it take for me to take home the trophy next year? There will be more prestigious competitions in Hungary, and I'll have to pull myself together just to make the top ten with modest World Championship results in the Far East.”

For our part, we would argue with the champion's last statement, but it doesn't take much of a genius to make it clear at the very beginning of the year that Kristóf Milák will be invited to the gala again next year.