Unbelievably, Hungary is chasing its first world championship at its home World Cup. On Sunday evening, it seemed for a moment as if it was finally home, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
Athletics World Championships 19.8.–27.8. Ylen channels. See the schedule and broadcast information of the games at this link.
Although the sports broadcasts of the Swedish public broadcasting company, or SVT, are usually full of stuff, on a July night in 1996, quite a blunder happened in the Olympic broadcasting station. The opening delegation of Hungary marched to the Atlanta stadium. The commentator characterized Hungary as a “traditional, small sports country”.
Even then, the facts would have ruined a good story. At the time, Hungary was clearly in the top ten in the all-time medal table of the Summer Olympics – and it still is today. Eighth place comes with 175 gold, 147 silver and 169 bronze medals. Ahead is a united Germany and the hollowed-out East Germany, or GDR, right after 1990. It’s from that “small sports country”.
Let’s move on from Pusta to the Lahti and Kaleva Games, where the Yleisherluhtieto Championship competitions, a gathering of the industry’s most committed geeks, have been organized as one of the outdoor sports programs for years. This year in Lahti, question number 29 c read like this: How many athletics world championships has Hungary won?
The question was good and timely, but the answer was downright dumbfounding: it is zero, not a single one.
On Sunday, it looked like it was at home for a while. By Bence Halasz the 80.82 meter jerk of the opening round lasted until the 4th round of the moukari final, until Poland’s Wojciech Nowicki went a centimeter ahead. The sigh of disappointment was deep in the stadium.
The fact is surprising especially because it is the main sport of the Summer Olympics and a country that belongs to the highest elite in the entire history of the Games. So far, the catch is seven silvers and as many bronzes.
Hungary is the 16th country to organize the World Athletics Championships in 40 years. Of the other host countries, only South Korea, with 264 Summer Olympic medals, lacks World Cup gold. There are no fewer than 74 countries that have won at least one World Cup gold.
Scandal 2004
Among Hungary’s great track and field athletes, the shot putter is also well known in Finland Christian Pars is an Olympic champion, but not a world champion. Olympic winners would also be a shot putter Adrian Annus and discus thrower Robert Fazekasif the duo had not been caught in Athens 2004 for their plans to manipulate the doping testing situation.
Doping is not the only theme for which this time’s race organizer is considered somewhat questionable. The most bright-eyed would not have given the World Cup to a NATO and fraternal partner that has regressed to a kind of semi-democracy in Finland in the first place.
In a way, Hungary will definitely be a unique host country in the modern history of prestigious athletics championships. In 1966 it organized the European Championships as a communist dictatorship, in 1998 as an emerging democracy that would soon be rewarded with membership in both NATO and the EU. In 2023, Hungary will host the prestige games from a political point of view for the third time, wearing a different hat. That hat is missing the colors of the rainbow.
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