István Hunor Mate (born 13 March 1983 in Csongrád, Hungary) is an Austrianswimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events.[1][2] He is also a twenty-two time Austrian national champion, five-time Austrian national record holder, and a current member of Wolfsberger SV in Vienna, Austria.
Born in Csongrád, Hungary, Mate started swimming at the age of seven, and had competed for breaststroke events in numerous national junior and senior championships. In 2005, he attended on a swimming scholarship at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he eventually became a varsity swimmer for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Swimming career
After graduating from the university, Mate was approached by the Austrian Swimming Federation (German: Österreichischen Schwimmverband, OSV), and accepted gradually as member of the national team. Upon his arrival in Austria, he trained for the swimming team, and represented his new nation in numerous championships, including the Olympic Games.
Mate qualified for two swimming events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by clearing a FINA A-standard entry time of 2:13.21 (200 m breaststroke) from the European Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands.[3][4] In the 100 m breaststroke, Mate set an Austrian record mark of 1:00.93 to touch the wall first in heat 4 by two seconds ahead of Turkey's Demir Atasoy, but missed the semifinals by 0.21 seconds, as he placed eighteenth out of 65 swimmers on the first night of preliminaries.[5] In his second event, 200 m breaststroke, Mate raced to third place and twenty-first overall on the same heat by 0.47 of a second behind New Zealand's Glenn Snyders, in his personal best of 2:11.56.[6]
Four years after competing in his first Olympics, Mate qualified for his second Austrian team, as a 29-year-old, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, by clearing a FINA B-time of 2:13.40.[9] In the 200 m breaststroke, Mate challenged seven other swimmers on the second heat including Canada's Scott Dickens and four-time Olympian Jakob Johann Sveinsson of Iceland. He came in fifth place by nine hundredths of a second (0.09) ahead of Thailand's Nuttapong Ketin with a time of 2:15.98. Mate, however, failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed twenty-ninth out of 64 swimmers in the preliminary heats.[10]
Austria