This article examines three case studies between 1951 and 1960 to illustrate how the 1956 Revolution and mass defection of Hungarian Olympic athletes following the Melbourne Games impacted the relations between Hungarian sport leaders and athletes. One of the defectors was Sergei Nemtsanov, a 17-year-old Russian diver. 01 February 2021 - On 9 January 2021, five-time Olympic champion gymnast gnes Keleti (photo) turned 100.IOC President Thomas Bach spoke with gnes on the phone, while Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) President Krisztin Kulcsr and Secretary General Blint Vkssy personally conveyed their best wishes to her.The oldest living Olympic champion is also one of the country's most . Andre Laguerre and members of the Sports Illustrated via Getty Images . K, Lszl Tbori, 93. Andre LaGuerre and members of the Sports Illustrated via Getty Images staff aided in some of their defections. 25 Moreover, as the interviewer co-creating the oral histories and the scholar analysing the materials, I cannot ignore the fact that my background and lenses influenced this analysis on several levels. She met her husband, Bernd Wachter, an international marketing executive for an oil company, in New York City while studying art history there. One night, as her team was celebrating at a reception, Gaehler slipped out of her living quarters and fled for West Germany. She made it safely. Instead he buckled down, earned his B.A. 54 A forradalom vrtaninak szellemben, Magyar Npsport, 1 Nov. 1956, 1. in French in three terms and, after earning a Ph.D. in Romance languages at Princeton on a Woodrow Wilson scholarship, became a professor. Most of the other athletes defected to America and settled in California. Edelman, Robert, The Five Hats of Nina Ponomareva: Sport, Shoplifting and the Cold War, Cold War History, 17, 3 (2017), 22339, 2378CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Render date: 2023-03-04T05:46:50.315Z 20 Gyrgy Pteri provides an excellent analysis of how Hungary's concerns about its external legitimacy impacted the state's participation in a 1958 international exposition, and the handling of a writer who had contacts with Imre Nagy but was tasked with creating a Hungarian pavilion at the 1958 show. Fax +36 1 386 9670. By the time the Games were over, the Soviets had crushed the opposition. Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has sought refuge at the Polish Embassy in Tokyo becoming the latest Olympic athlete to refuse to return to her country out of fear for her personal safety. He and beauty queen Eva Timar, the fiance for whom he returned to Hungary, were married for 10 years. 110 Alena Ledeneva mentions the continued usefulness of connections and blat in the post-socialist era in her seminal work on the topic. I am positively convinced that if the government did more in this field, we would have little of this disturbance, Joseph told CNN. See Toby Rider, Cold War. By the time he retired he had risen to chief of research and the firm employed 11,000 people. The head of the Soviet Olympic squad claimed that unidentified terrorists had kidnapped Nemtsanov and brainwashed him to embrace freedom. In reality, Nemtsanov had fallen in love with a female diver from Cincinnati and was hiding with a family in Ontario. He eventually had to revoke his defection, and he left brokenhearted. She memorized 25 English words a day, figuring, "if I forget 20, I'm still five ahead." Henriksen, Kristoffer, Stambulova, Natalia and Roessler, Kirsten Kaya, Holistic Approach to Athletic Talent Development Environments: A Successful Sailing Milieu, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 3 (2010), 21222CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 214. He decided to defect in part because he had lost a Supreme Court judgeship for making anti-Soviet rulings. When Tsimanouskaya made clear her intention to seek asylum Sunday, the Czech Republic offered to welcome her. She chose to defect in part because of a failing marriage to her first husband, former Olympic boxer Matyas Plachy, from whom she kept her decision a secret. At 80 he's still an adjunct professor of French at PCC and swims a mile each day. 60 A. ghassi, Egy elmaradt kzfogs trte kett az lett, 19 Aug. 2006, available at http://index.hu/sport/2006/08/19/060816bg/, (last visited 18 June 2017); Ldia Skovics, interview with the author, 1 Apr. TOKYO, Oct. 23 Three Hungarians, one a member of his country's Olympic canoeing team, have defected to the United States. Tnyek s Tank, Who Paid the Piper? They threatened to withdraw from the final two days of the Games but ultimately decided to stay and compete. "In Hungary there were 20 or 30 great fencers, and it was so much fun to compete with them," says Magay, who's 80 and lives in Los Altos, Calif. "So I really gave up fencing when I came here. 95 Itt Tdor beszk a Sportuszodbl Sport, 24 Feb. 1957, 4. He landed a job with the government in Washington, D.C., that used his ability to speak six languages, but he feared an escalation of the cold war and fled to coach in Scandinavia. However, there is little information on who they were, where they were from, and where they went. Did you know.as of 2016, Hungary ranks 8th in the world in medals at the Summer Olympic Games despite its being torn apart after WWI and losing half her population and 2/3 of her territory. Soproni, j csillagok. ", His runners -- Sandor Iharos, Istvan Rozsavogli and fellow defector Laszlo Tabori -- had been the Kenyans of their time, breaking 22 world records between 1954 and the Melbourne Games. "Women are stronger than men, just not as explosive," he says, citing the rigors of a nine-month pregnancy. by Campbell, Alan, 2, 3 (2013), 66775Google Scholar; Takcs, Tibor, Them and Us: Narratives of Agents from the Kadar Era, The Hungarian Historical Review, 4, 1 (2015), 14470, 167Google Scholar. Margit (Margaret) Korondi Szalay, Gymnastics. 47 Szcs was tried in an accelerated procedure by the military court, with soldiers standing along the corridor. When the team heard the news, only 38 athletes decided to ride the plane back home. That's what surfing is: You go up; you go down.". Selected to represent Hungary in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games, he made a life-changing decision. He went on to become U.S. Olympian, serving as coxswain of the men's eight that won gold at the 1964 Games. Pithy and outspoken, he told a reporter during the SI tour, "Russians would have worked for years to arrange this." Hungarian athletes have won a total of 475 medals, with fencing as the top medal-producing sport. But a few weeks after his escape from the Olympic Village, Nemtsanov decided to return home. ", Arpad Domyan, Water Polo; Katalin (Katherine) Szoke Domyan, Swimming. What made the Kdr Era? by Duffy, Eve (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999)Google Scholar; Fulbrook, Mary, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, NH: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism; McDougall, People's State. That's when SI's parent, Time Inc., needed a place in Alexandria, Va., to house its Time-Life Books unit, and the company rented office space from one of the people it had brought to the U.S. Jozsef Sakovics and Lidia Domolky Sakovics, Fencing. Athletes from Afghanistan carry their countrys flag in Paralympics Closing CAS report explains decision for ban of track star Shelby Houlihan, rejects ShaCarri Richardson finally gets in blocks, finishes last in 100 at Prefon After missing the Olympics, ShaCarri Richardson gets her shot against the Afghanistans first female Paralympian is trapped in Kabul and cannot get t Polish Olympian auctions off silver medal to help pay for infants surgery. Athlete defections from Cuba, not only during the Olympics, have been common since the 1959 Cuban revolution. In Florida it's summer all year long. He ran the pool at a rec center in Lynwood, Calif., before coaching at Miami, then in Spain and finally in Australia. 62 Fdration Internationale de Football Association to National Associations, Information to the National Associations Affiliated to FIFA Transfer of Hungarian refugee footballers, 17 July 1957, Fdration Internationale de Football Association Archives (FA), Zurich. Both fled because Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, had been ousted from office. Arpad would knock off his day job at five, then hammer away until after midnight. The coach announced on Aug. 18, 1948, that she intended to seek asylum in the United States. Phone +36 1 386 8000. See Braun, Jutta and Wiese, Ren, Tracksuit Traitors: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 31, 12 (2014), 151934CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 1945mid-1960s, in Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grgory, eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), 7181, 71Google Scholar. And when the International Swimming Hall of Fame inducted Katherine in 1985, Arpad threw a huge party for her at L'Orangerie, with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Art Linkletter and Anna Maria Alberghetti among the guests. 97 See Saunders, Frances Stoner, Who Paid the Piper? These changes shaped the emerging politics of cooperation in the post-1956 Hungarian sport community, in which cooperative members of both groups could achieve their respective diplomatic, career and lifestyle goals. . But the glimmer of a gold medal stoked little national pride in the 57-year-old president of the International Gymnastic Federation. Email info@olimpia.hu. Gyrgy Pteri, Transsystemic Fantasies. An estimated 55 of the 110 Hungarian athletes and coaches defected at the end of the 1956 Olympics, and 35 sought asylum in the United States. Back where the SI tour began, he took a job lifeguarding at an athletic club in Oakland for $6 an hour plus meals, then went on to install air conditioning, build furniture, work as a masseur, carve gun handles, open a restaurant and run a hotel. Gyrgy Pteri demonstrates how similar aims motivated Hungarian state organs and cultural figures in the creation of the nation's pavilion at the 1958 Expo in Brussels. Belarusian Olympic sprinter who sought protection in Japan granted Polish visa. Heres a look at several prominent Olympic defections. ", For several months Zador joined a brother in Washington, D.C., and taught dancing at an Arthur Murray studio. 2015, Budapest, Hungary. "I have a pretty good reputation and can go back over my bridges. 1945mid-1960s, Ennival s hozomny: a kora kdrizmus ideolgija, Bevezets a Kdrizmusba: Magyarorszg a Szovjetuni rnykban, 19441989, The Workers State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Communist Hungary, 19441958, Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary, 19561989. From Defectors to Cooperators: The Impact of 1956 on Ursinus College, 601 E. Main Street, Collegeville, PA 19426, United States, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777319000183, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Dozens of Hungarian athletes defected from the Games that year, most to the United States. 1951, P. 1011, 3.1.9. Zador found himself working as a lifeguard in Oakland, Calif., for $6 an hour before eventually opening a restaurant and running a hotel. Later that week, the Cuban team took the field with only 10 players, ESPN reported. 14 Standeisky, va, Az rk s hatalom (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 1996)Google Scholar; Kalmr, Melinda, Ennival s hozomny: a kora kdrizmus ideolgija (Budapest: Magvet Knyvkiad s Kereskedelmi, 1998)Google Scholar; Rainer, Jnos, Bevezets a Kdrizmusba: Magyarorszg a Szovjetuni rnykban, 19441989 (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 2011)Google Scholar; Pittaway, Mark, The Workers State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Communist Hungary, 19441958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Mark, James and Apor, Pter, Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary, 19561989, Journal of Modern History, 87(2015), 85291CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horvth, Sndor, Stalinism Reloaded: Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary, trans. Known as Pierre for his French affectations, Hungary's water polo goalie refused to stand for the Soviet anthem after the "blood-in-the-water" match. It looks like a still from Casablanca, the photo SI ran of Lidia Domolky's reunion with her brother George, who had swum a river and dodged landmines to escape Hungary through Austria and join her in the U.S. One of the largest numbers of asylum seekers at an Olympics were the Hungarians who defected during the 1956 Games in Melbourne. While sport leaders recognised the need to soften their policies towards athletes, athletes learned that socialist Hungary, and not the capitalist . I worked. Shortly before the London Olympics, Provaznikova led 28,000 female gymnasts in a demonstration in Prague in support of former president Edvard Benes. There were Hungarian athletes who remained in Melbourne following the Olympics. 1957, 32. In 1974 Takach climbed the Matterhorn, and as recently as 2010, before contracting melanoma, was still doing front flips on a mat. Zimsen, who is 72 and lives with her husband in Bremerton, Wash., proudly points to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page from late 1959, where a picture of her happens to run adjacent to one of Soviet premier Nikita Kruschchev. In the U.S., Iogloi continued his magic, turning Jim Beatty into the first miler to run under four minutes indoors. Despite the difficulties of adapting to life in a country where at first he didnt speak the language, Zador said before his death in 2012 that there hasnt been a moment Ive regretted it, Sports Illustrated reported. Silk, Mike, Schultz, Jaime and Bracey, Bryan, From Mice to Men: Miracle, Mythology, and the Magic Kingdom, Sport in Society, 11, 23 (2008), 27997, 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An actress can get another role and it's the same work. "Mine's bigger," she says. 96 Gyarmati's Story, Sports Illustrated. ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct. 26 (AP)A 22yearold Hungarian Olympic athlete who defected to the West was turned over to Air Force authorities today to receive transportation to Washington, D.C . "And because George had gotten out, that really pushed us to try to stay in the U.S. George Domolky, for his part, never looked back after getting a taste of the West: He joined the SI tour, then fenced at Stanford and got his MBA from Cal. The Svengali spirit of his mentor even permeated the running-shoe store Tabori ran for two decades, where he refused to put products on display because he didn't trust customers to pick out the right pair. Poland has given the athlete a humanitarian visa, and she will fly to Warsaw on Wednesday to seek asylum, according to Alexander Opeikin, executive director of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation, a group that opposes the Belarusian government. 53 Several swimmers and a cyclist were shot at while attempting to defect in August 1956, although it is not clear if the authorities knew that they were athletes. 58 Dniel Magay, interview with the author, 11 Mar. 75 Hat hnap utn ismt a Sportuszodban, NpSport, 17 May 1957, 2. According to the Associated Press, 117 people defected at the Munich games. He represented Hungary in the Rome and Tokyo Olympics, then ran a sports shop in Budapest. I loved the man.". In 1976, four Romanians and one Russian sought refuge in Canada. Marie Provaznikova, a Czech who was President of the International Gymnastics Federation, was the first person to defect from the Olympics. Today he's a renowned fund manager with Fidelity Investments in Boston. disszidlsi gye, 3 Mar. Everything that is happening now absolutely wasnt in my plans, she said. Two Hungarian athletesa canoeist and a marksmandefected in 1964 and later found sanctuary in the United States. 2023 ABG-SI LLC. Tsimanouskaya told the Associated Press her move to seek asylum was not premeditated. During the games, the water polo semifinal between Hungary and the Soviet Union turned nasty, and photos showed players with bloody mouths and foreheads coming out of the pool. (Video: The Washington Post). Afghanistans flag bearer, boxer Jawid Aman Mukhamad, had the same problem: Afghan officials accused him of being a communist (Mukhamad had trained in Russia). "The U.S. of that period was a land of endless opportunities," he says, "but my teaching career has been like an avalanche, straight down -- from Princeton to USC to Pasadena City College." Novelist and water polo player Ferenc Karinthy thought to contact Jzsef Sndor, a high-ranking party member on the Central Committee, about the issue, through Sndor's masseuse at the pool. Now 78, she lives with her husband, retired physics professor Charles Shapiro, in Novato, Calif., while Aniko lives nearby and works as a chemical engineer. A week later, he rejected that same flag and defected to the U.S. Ahmed vocally opposed Saddam Husseins regime, and he feared execution. Several Sudanese runners also sought asylum in British police stations. While her team wined and dined, Ute Gaehler, an alternate for East Germanys toboggan team, ran for the border. 71 K, Andrs, Lszl Tbori, A Biography: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner (Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2015), 103Google Scholar. All Rights Reserved. 79 Gyarmati's Story, Sports Illustrated. 73 In the absence of concrete evidence, retribution seemed limited to requisitioning the apartments of the defectors, although family members could even remove the personal effects beforehand. hasContentIssue true, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2019. As of yet, it has not appeared to so do. Address Budapest. Yes, there was that time in 1965, the day before his wedding, that he misjudged a dive and wound up having his face reconstructed. Two Books on Hungary's Recent Past, The Hungarian Historical Review, trans. : Patrons, Clients, Brokers and Unofficial Networks in the Stalinist Music World, Russias Economy of Favors: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, A kz-kezet mos: A szocialista sszekttetsek a Kdr-korszakban, Palette: I. j- s Jelentkortrtni Tudomnyos Dikkonferencia, Cold War Games: Spies, Subterfuge and Secret Operations at the 1956 Olympic Games, The End of Amateurism in American Track and Field, Lszl Tbori, A Biography: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner, Tracksuit Traitors: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run, Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 19571990, Gyarmati sors, avagy egy bal kz trtnete, Srni csak a gyztesnek szabad! "It sounds funny," he says, "but I thought if I could win an Olympic gold medal, there was nothing I couldn't do.". He coached four Olympic paddlers at a kayak club in Ohio and spent 32 years as a hydraulic engineer. Reduced to serving as the rec director of an orphanage on Long Island, he was afraid to return to Hungary because of things he had been quoted as saying. Paperback - March 3, 2020. ", He arrived with an engineering degree and fenced well, winning or sharing three U.S. titles and representing the U.S. in the Tokyo Olympics. Chin, Jessica W. The history of Olympic defectors. Although there are numerous factors that can influence the development of successful athletes, some of the important possible factors that relate to the parents' socio-economic and cultural background include the athletes' preconditions (coaching resources, training, facilities and finances) and their ability to acquire the necessary psycho-social competencies (sport knowledge and connections). There was still a faint scar over his right eye, a reminder of the incident that made his face the iconic image of Hungary's "blood-in-the-water" defeat of the Soviet Union in Melbourne.

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