After six atmosphere-charged days how does it feel to be back to normal?

We are tired. The competitors and coaches need time to digest the events and elation at what happened at the European Championship and also to recover from the mental strain involved.

Six gold, four silver and three bronze medals. After Turin 1954 this was the second most successful European Championship in the history of Hungarian swimming. 

This result is worth an outstanding 87 Olympic points, which speaks for itself! The six golds were shared equally between the boys and the girls and it is a special achievement that one of the golds won by the girls was in a relay event. If a country can win in a relay race, that's an indication of the strength of that country's swimming sport.   

As well as the fact that Hungary has won the right to organise swimming European championships one after the other in recent years...

It really is unique that we organised the Junior European Championship in 2005, then the adult championship in 2006, the short course one in 2007 and in four years we will again organise the adult event. But this is thanks to Tamás Gyárfás, the vice-president of the European Swimming Federation and his diplomacy in sport. And what the spectators did is also unforgettable. They created a marvellously happy atmosphere which really encouraged us, and even the foreigners pointed out that the six thousand spectators really deserved a medal for fair play when they cheered on the heats even when there were no Hungarian contestants.

It seems that after the Egerszegi-Darnyi golden age we're on the threshold of another great era.

It must be mentioned that at the time of Krisztina Egerszegi and Tamás Darnyi's victories there were several other aces in the national team. Then in the years that followed Ági Kovács came to embody Hungarian swimming. But the present national team really are a "team". The 13 medals were won by 9 swimmers. 

What can all this talent be attributed to after so many ups and downs in performance?

Swimming has always been a top-ranking sport in Hungary. It's worth managing it also because it's a fundamental sport from which several other sports branch off. There are several examples of water polo players, pentathlon and canoe/kayak athletes starting out as swimmers. There have always been ups and downs in the performance of swimmers but the federation has put together a programme aimed at nurturing talent with the focus on managing the coaches since they are the ones who can create something out of nothing. High quality, creative coaching work is our strength, and it's really something that there's a friendly, helpful relationship between the competitors and the coaches. It is also an important fact for the future that the 59 Hungarian contestants come from 6 Budapest clubs and 14 from outside Budapest.

Half way towards the London Olympics how do you see this success at the European Championship?

It's very encouraging. This was the only competition this year that was a barometer of the swimmers at a European level, since every one of the competitors from 44 countries wanted to perform at their very best.

 Have you put together the London team yet or will you include some of the swimmers taking part in the currently ongoing junior championship?

I definitely want to include some juniors. We were short of eight young swimmers at the European championships. One of them, the 17-year-old Bence Biczó, won the gold at the junior championship with a time that would have got him a silver medal at the adult event, and Péter Bernek's time would have entitled him to swim in the final heat of the 200 backstroke. Our having 59 competitors at the European Championship this year was also of significance because we were able to get a lot of young people started who were very much influenced by the adult competition. So we have a lot of talented young swimmers who have the chance not only to take part in the London Olympic Games but at the following two as well. The gold medal winners Katinka Hosszú, Laci Cseh, and Dani Gyurta, stand a good chance of repeating their achievements of last week in London.

LÁSZLÓ KISS

Born in Budapest in 1940. • Started to swim in 1954 in the FTC club and later in the Budai Spartacus and Budapest Honvéd clubs. • From 1965 he was the coach and senior coach for Budai Spartacus. • From 1969 he was the swimming coach for the national pentathlon team. • Since 1993 he has been the vice-president of the Hungarian Swimming Federation and then the coach for the women's national swimming team. • His students have included Krisztina Egerszegi, Ágnes Kovács, Károly Güttler and István Batházi. • He won the tile of best coach of the year six times between 1991 and 1999.