Olympic Dark Horse - Shane Tusup

Director: Ádám Miklósi, Arrabona Studios

Synopsis

Olympic Dark Horse was planned as a weekly YouTube video series with the goal of becoming a full-length documentary for Netflix about Shane Tusup coaching young swimmers for the Tokyo Olympics.

More details

Shane Tusup took a hiatus from coaching after the highly publicized divorce from Katinka Hosszú, which ended their collaboration and resulted in 3 Olympic golds. In 2019 he decided to make a comeback. Moving back to Hungary, he started training several swimmers, including many promising talents. Liliana Szilagyi, one of Hungary’s rising stars, was one of these swimmers, and I was fortunate to edit the episode that told the story of her joining Shane Tusup’s team.

This episode talks about how Tusup wasn’t able to enter the competition area due to his coaching permit not being issued by the Hungarian Swimming Association.

However, this partnership did not end well. Swimmers slowly left Tusup’s team, the pandemic arrived, and the 2020 Olympics were postponed to the following year.

Tusup since abandoned the project and doesn’t coach swimmers anymore.

Process

I worked on this with a one-day turnaround, working closely with the director, Ádám Miklósi. I received low-resolution proxies and a project file and I produced a rough cut under 24 hours for the 15 minute episode.

The director and I aimed for a cinematic style that told the story with clarity. My goal was to ensure that the episode featured the emotional growth that the full-length documentary would have respecting the overarching narrative. It was important to add depth (and length) to the dramatic beats.

Results

The episode I edited remains the most watched video in the series (30k views as of May 2026).