Dominant Hosszu takes World Cup medals tally to 10

DUBAI (AFP) –

Katinka Hosszu of Hungary competes in the Women’s 200m butterfly final during the FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup 2012 in Dubai. Hosszu continued to rule the pool as she finished the FINA World Cup 2012 series opener in Dubai with a whopping haul of eight gold medals and two bronze on Wednesday.

Katinka Hosszu continued to rule the pool as she finished the FINA World Cup 2012 series opener in Dubai with a whopping haul of eight gold medals and two bronze on Wednesday.

On the second night at Dubai’s Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Sports Complex, the Hungarian — in her first season as a professional swimmer — collected four individual golds and later picked up another in the newly introduced mixed team 4x50m freestyle relay.

Hosszu collected a tidy sum of $11,000 for her efforts ($1,500 for every gold and $500 for bronze, with no prize money for team events), and is the early favourite to win the eight-event series and the $100,000 bonus that comes along with it.

As expected, the South African duo of defending men’s World Cup champion Chad Le Clos and two-time winner Cameron van der Burgh, both Olympic champions, won their events and will head off to Doha for next week’s tournament with two golds.

Olympics 200m butterfly champion Clos added the 100m fly gold with a superb time of 49.82sec, finishing way ahead of Russia’s Evgeny Korotyshkin (50.67) and American Tom Shields (50.97).

Van der Burgh, who created a controversy in London after admitting he used the illegal dolphin kick, added the men’s 100m breaststroke to his earlier 50m in Dubai.

The world record-holder pipped New Zealand’s Glenn Snyders by nine-tenths of a second with a time of 58.33.

Reigning World Cup women’s champion, Sweden’s Therese Alshammar, added the 50m freestyle title to her haul, having already won the 100m butterfly and 50m freestyle on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old was in fine form as she touched the pad with a timing of 25.56, way ahead of second-place Inge Dekker of Netherlands (26.08).

Olympic gold medalist Chad Le Clos of South Africa looks at his timing after competing in the Men’s 100m butterfly final during the FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup 2012 in Dubai.

Hosszu’s first gold of the day came in the 400m individual medley, where she dominated the race and finished almost five seconds ahead of team-mate Zsuzsanna Jakabos in a time of 4min 31.34sec.

She returned very soon and made it two in two for the evening in the 200m butterfly, again edging out Jakabos.

Gold number six did not take much time either and she added the 400m freestyle to her IM title with a time of 4:04.43, before he seventh and final individual gold in the 100m IM.

Amazingly, she returned again soon after and anchored Hungary to victory in the mixed relay.

The Swimming World Cup 2012, whose eight events will take place on short, 25m courses, now moves to a brand new host city, with Doha, Qatar, hosting its first ever championship from October 6-7.

A total prize fund of $1.2 million will be distributed to the winners by the end of the series.