MÚSZ — Magyar Úszó Szövetség

What it is

Magyar Úszó Szövetség governs swimming in Hungary, one of the great swimming nations. Its statute records it as the general legal successor of the swimming association founded in 1907, and it operates from Margaret Island in Budapest — the historic home of Hungarian swimming. Its statutory English name is the Hungarian Swimming Federation.^[1]

Sándor Wladár, the 1980 Olympic backstroke champion, was re-elected president unopposed and unanimously on 28 May 2025. The presidential term was cut from five years to four at World Aquatics' requirement that every national body elect on four-year cycles.^[2]

The federation's own Olympic ledger stands at 32 gold, 28 silver and 21 bronze through Paris 2024, with a medal in the pool at every World Championships since 1973.^[3]

How the national team is selected

There is no standalone selection-criteria document; the operative instrument is the annual szakmai terv, the technical plan, which states expressly that the selection principles are based on the European Championship qualification window.^[4]

Three things make it unusually legible:

• Squads are tiered on objective international results — an elite tier for world-championship medallists, then tiers for world finalists, for 9th-16th at the Worlds, and for under-23 top-six finishers, each with differentiated published funding.
• Actual qualifying times are published, in full tables, alongside the international championship standards for comparison.
• The youth decision chain is stated and repeated: the youth national coach compiles a proposal, a committee supports it, and the federation presidency approves it — applied against dated ranking positions, with a designated selection meet.^[4]

The federation maintains a live national ranking list, filterable by event, age group, pool and year, which is a direct legal input to selection — the statute requires programmes to be built according to the selection principles. Entry to the national championships is itself time-standard-gated. What evidences a specific selection, in descending formality, is a numbered presidency resolution, the named roster in the technical plan, the public squad pages, and the ranking position and championship result that triggered it.^[5] [6]