As Hubert Kós talks, you can tell he has a deep vein of Irish running through: the Hungarian has a sense of Seanchaí, Scéalaíocht and Scéal about him, the craic, the Blarney Stone's "gift of the gab" tangible in his talk. He's a storyteller, non-fiction.

The Olympic 200m backstroke champion - whose father grew up in Cork, granny being Irish and married to an Hungarian granddad who emigrated to Ireland with his family at the age of 6 in 1946 - is about to take on six events at the European Championships here in Paris: 50, 100, 200 back, 100 and 200m 'fly - and the 200IM, in which he aims to uphold Longhorn pride in Europe, what with teammate and Texas training partner Léon Marchand out of the multi-stroke sprint while he recovers from injury:

Marchand To Manage His Injury Setback By Upping His Self-Care Game En Route To LA2028

Léon Marchand on the long-term prognosis of his injury: “I’m gonna try to do better on the ... outside thing of the pool. I would say I need to prepare better, warm up better. There’s a lot of things I can do better to not get another injury in the future.” His drive? “More records...”

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

When the chat turns to coach Bob Bowman and a shoal of speedy swimming sensations fast forming the latest Longhorns league of legends, Hubert is asked whether working in that environment is like being on the set of the Avengers.

So, that's Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Falcon, War Machine, Spider-Man, and Ant-Man. Of all of them, perhaps Spider-Man will be the closest to Kós by the time his swimming spinnerets are done, given the web of multi-skills he intends to weave on his way to LA2028. Of course, he's not alone, the Texas tribe including other all-rounder threats like Marchand, Shaine Casas and Carson Foster. Says Hubi:

"Honestly, it's better than the Avengers. Like, this sort of group has never been assembled before in the history of swimming, I think. You know, you had amazing swimmers in the past that Bob's trained, like Michael Phelps, obviously, but the amount of swimmers [he's coached] that are really good.

"You know, you could put up 10 swimmers in a heat and they'd all have Olympic golds or world championship golds or all Olympic medals. Like, it's, it's incredible. And we've got young guys coming up and, and they one day might become Olympic medalists. So it's, it's very cool to see that. And, you know, some days you have to fight for your life in there and nothing's a given in that, in that group."