Hungarian Sors Targets Six Medals at Swimming European Championships

“The Championships are really important for me ahead of the Paralympics next year. They will show my weaknesses and the strength of my opponents and afterwards I will know on which things I need to work.”

Hungary’s Paralympic Champion and holder of two world records Tamas Sors is aiming to win a medal in every event he competes in at July’s 2011 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Swimming European Championships in Berlin, Germany, making it six medals in total.

Despite competing in six S9 events in the German capital - 100m Butterfly, 50m Freestyle, 100m Freestyle, 400m Freestyle, 100m Backstroke and 200m Individual Medley - the 19 year old, who was born without a lower right arm, is confident he can medal in all of them.

Talking to www.paralympic.org, the IPC’s website, Tamas Sors said: “My target for Berlin is to win three golds, two silver and one bronze medal.

“I am training five hours per day, four in the pool and one hour in the gym, to achieve this goal at the Europeans in Berlin.

“The Championships are really important for me ahead of the Paralympics next year. They will show my weaknesses and the strength of my opponents and afterwards I will know on which things I need to work.”

At the last European Championships in 2009 in Reykjavik, Iceland, Sors, who only took up swimming aged 12, was one of the biggest medal winners taking home four gold medals. This included gold in his favourite and most successful event the 100m Butterfly, an event he is the reigning World and Paralympic Champion in as well as the World record holder with a time of 59.34 seconds.

Sors is also hold the World record holder in the 50m Butterfly with a time of 27.44 seconds, set in May 2009 at Berlin’s Europasportpark, the venue of July’s Championships.

Despite these successes and his own expectations, Sors still claims not to feel any pressure.

Tamas Sors said: “There is no pressure on me right now. I usually feel it right before the start of the event, but it normally passes quickly.”

Other swimmers set to compete in Berlin between 3-10 July include two-time Paralympic champion Frenchman David Smetanine and Ukraine’s Maksym Veraksa, the fastest Para-Swimmer in the world.