ASU Olympians

With a pulsing arm and throbbing elbow, Bohus collects himself and his broken bicycle, walks home to borrow a friend’s bike, and rides to practice with what later that day the doctor would diagnose as a broken left wrist and broken right elbow.

“The doctor told me I could either chose the surgery which was two months healing time, or I choose just the cast, but that’s like three to four months, so I thought ‘OK I’ll go for the two months,’” Bohus said.

The swimmer underwent surgery in October 2015 and added a fourth screw to the three he already had from a shoulder injury he suffered less than a year before his bike accident.

Overtraining. That’s what Bohus said caused the deterioration of the cartilage in his shoulder his sophomore year at Arizona State University in 2014. After given Cortisone shots, Bohus traveled back to Hungary to visit his National Team doctor who gave the prognosis to him straight:

“If you want to continue swimming, you need the surgery,” his doctor said.

Bohus knew it wouldn’t be an easy fix because of the way the shoulder was popping.

“The doctor told me that I only have a small percentage that I was going to actually feel better after the surgery. I guess it was hard to fix because my shoulder was popping forward which is the weird way. But, thank god it worked out.”

Bohus fought his way back and his shoulder did start feeling better. That is, until the bike accident.

“I was pretty broken down,” Bohus said. “After the first surgery I thought I was done. I didn’t know how I was going to handle it, it was a mess. I just stayed at home after the surgery for like three weeks by myself.”

Enter Bob Bowman, the new coach of the successful ASU Swim and Dive team and later named the the Men’s U.S. Olympic Team Head Coach for the upcoming 2016 summer Olympics in Rio. Bohus, who left the National Team in 2013, was excited to work with Bowman but was delayed with his recovery.  Despite the new addition, Bohus remained at home by himself.

“It was one of the toughest couple of weeks in my life.” Bohus said. “The thoughts were killing me, especially when the new staff came like Bob and I wanted to prove myself to him. I start off like this and I felt awful.”

In the months that followed, all Bohus could do was watch his teammates get Bowman’s elite instruction while he kicked his legs in a separate pool to keep them in shape while his arms healed. Bohus resolved to do whatever he could to get back in the pool, an attitude he did not always have.

Just weeks after the 2012 London Olympic Games, Bohus was ready to give up.

He started his Olympic run off hopeful, defying odds to qualify for the 100-meter backstroke in the Olympic Trials in Hungary. At his morning swim, Bohus said he swam badly. His then-injured shoulder popped out of its socket. At lunchtime before the race, his coach said he probably wouldn’t qualify. Just before the race, he visited the trainer, who popped the shoulder back in.  After a vicious swim, Bohus looked up to the board for his time, heart pounding.

He had qualified by five hundredths of a second.

“I set that time almost a year before and ended up getting the exact same time so I was really pumped and I wasn't even pumped because I made the Olympics but because I made the same time that I wanted to.”

But, once in London and after multiple heats in the Men’s 100-meter backstroke, Bohus finished 22nd overall, an outcome that disappointed him.

Bohus also had some negative experiences on the National Team, including a poor relationship with his coach that has since been patched up. While he keeps those experiences to himself, Bohus was on the verge of ending his swimming career altogether. He carried that feeling with him for the three years following the Olympics.

"I noticed that he was very unmotivated after London, and I think that it was because he didn't get enough support from the Hungarian swimming team," Bohus's brother Gergely said. "He gave everything he had in every competition and they just didn't honor his work. I remember, even during the Olimpics, they didn't allow him to be part of the relay team, even though he was faster than the other swimmer. And this lack of support started way before the summer games. He couldn't go to training camps, because they took people who had more money and things like that. It was his dream to participate in the Olympics, and I think that the leaders of our swimming team didn't give him the attention he needed, and didn't believe in him."

“After that I wanted to stop swimming,” (Richard) Bohus said. “I thought I would never swim fast again or as fast as I wanted. I didn't really have another goal that was on the same level, I didn’t have any motivation and I was just going to practices but I just didn’t really care.”

In a way, Bohus reverted back to his childhood days, a time when his mother encouraged him to keep up with the sport.

“The first 10 years were terrible, like I hated swimming,” Bohus said. “I did it for my mom because she said you have to be healthy and she said after grammar school I could decide if I wanted to do it or not.”

With dreams to be an architect, Bohus didn’t see swimming in his future however, every time he was about to step away, he reached a new time or swam better than his teammates. Every time Bohus promised himself, “just one more year” he couldn’t pull himself away from success. He qualified for the Junior Europeans twice and swam all the way up to the biggest stage in the world.

But, rather than swimming itslef, perhaps Bohus’ ultimate passion was the very challenge. That's what rekindled the backstroker's dying interest.

“Whenever I broke my arms the first thing that popped into my mind was ‘Can I make it back to the Olympics with four months less than the other guys have?’” Bohus said. “I think of it as a challenge. The surgeries and the injuries, they made me motivated again because I just wanted to prove to myself that I could come back together.”

In Bohus’ first two weeks back from surgery, he swam well against Wyoming and Stanford.  The third meet, however, against perennially strong Arizona, was be the stage where he proved himself to Bowman for the first time.

"I think he is both passionate about swimming and both loves competiting. When we were children, we always made a competition about everything, and neither of us likes to lose, so we had some serious races," Gergely Bohus said.  

Unable to pull as much with his shoulders, Bohus used his stronger arms to tear through the water and break the school record he set his freshman year at ASU.

“It's so much more motivating when you have the best environment, the best coaches,” Bohus said. “I was so pumped up like I wanted to show how fired up I was about the whole situation.”

Bohus felt a ping of ambition. A feeling he had not felt since before his injuries. A feeling he attributed to determination and constant visualization.

“A month before a big competition, I go to bed and I swim in my head,” Bohus said.  “Whatever I want to fix, I'm trying to make it a memory so when I'm swimming in my unconscious during the race and can't remember anything, I know it was as perfect as I planned it. If I remember a couple moments, I know it wasn't going as I planned.”

"Richard is the most confident swimmer I have ever known," Bohus' longtime friend and fellow swimmer David Hildiberg said. "He achieves this by training his mind as much as his body. His mental strength has enabled him to overcome any obstacle you throw at him, and that is what differentiates him from other athletes."

Through everything, Bohus kept himself accountable. He had lost countless races by hundredths of a second and qualified by the same small margin. He swam in his subconscious and catered his diet to the foods he knew would energize him. He dealt with the 5,000 miles between him and his family and the periods of deafening silence as he recovered at home by himself. And when his passion circled the drain, he kept on, because of the need to prove himself.

“Whenever you have a challenge in life and it's impossible to come back, the best feeling and probably the biggest happiness you'll have is when you overcome that and you succeed,” Bohus said.

"Richard is not the person who gives up his favorite activity, because of somebody or something. If he has a goal, he earns it no matter what happens. It's truely unbelievable what he has done in his life," (Gergely) Bohus said.

In a candid moment, Bohus said he was “happy he swam badly in the last Olympics” and “happy he broke [his] arms.”

Without it, he wouldn’t be swimming under Bowman today, in pursuit of a college diploma and another chance to make it back to the Olympics.

“I want to make it count,” Bohus said.  “I want to prove to myself that I can reach goals that I dream about. And it’s the happiest moment when you reach something that you planned like a year ago and that just changes your whole perspective on life because if you can catch the dreams you chase, well… that's everything.”