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. The man who carried the flag for Eritrea, steeplechaser Weynay Ghebresilasie, along with three others from the Eritrean delegation, also chose to defect, VOA News reported in 2012. Szzad, Hall a szerelmrt. Brny Istvn urnak, 5 July 1957, folder 1957 Uszs, box 105, XIX-I-14-a, MNL OL. Laszlo Nadori, Hungarian Sports Ministry Chief of Staff. Mi trtnt a Magyar Trsadalommal 1956 Utn? Thousands were killed and wounded, and hundreds of thousands fled the country. Upon learning that his wife back home was pregnant, he bolted the SI tour early and returned to Hungary, which welcomed him back for the 1960 Rome Olympics. One exception in the Hungarian sport literature is Ivan, Emese and Ivan, Dezs, The 1956 Revolution and the Melbourne Olympics: The Changing Perceptions of a Dramatic Story, Hungarian Studies Review, 35, 12 (2008), 923Google Scholar. 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 . Parks, Olympic Games, xviixx, 4. Teams from Hungary have been in most Summer Olympic Games and every Winter Olympic Games since then. 15 See Neuberger, Mary, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Bren, Paulina and Neuberger, Mary eds., Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Victor Petrov, A Cyber-Socialism at Home and Abroad: Bulgarian Modernisation, Computers, and the World, 19671989, PhD diss., Columbia University, 2017; Pteri, Gyrgy, Nylon Curtain Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russian and East-Central Europe, Slavonica, 10, 2 (2004), 11323CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 21 On the American side of the defections, see Toby Rider, Cold War. Kimia Alizadeh: Iranian defector from Olympic Refugee Team stuns two 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. 18 Kende, Mi trtnt, 112; Majtnyi, Gyrgy, What made the Kdr Era? Home; About. There were Hungarian athletes who remained in Melbourne following the Olympics. 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. 88 He says he helped pull down a large red star from a building and build a barricade in Budapest. I didn't burn too many behind me. 89 The Committee's purpose was to determine how to compete and act at the Olympics. She sought the protection of Japanese authorities at the Tokyo airport Sunday night. 12 Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grgory eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruter Oldenbourg, 2018), 5Google Scholar; Edelman, Robert and Young, Christopher, eds., The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The resulting mission, Operation Griffin, enabled one-third of the Hungarian Olympic team and four Romanian Olympic athletes to defect to the United States directly after the Melbourne Olympic Games. Members of the Football team that was withdrawn from competition before the Games defected to Australia and settled. Kende, Mi trtnt, 9. The defectors were directed to the police station in Szeged to make a formal request for asylum. In Hungary everything was kind of gray.". 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. FGCU's Halmai helps break Hungarian national record at Olympics He is now deceased. Five days after Takach's arrival in the U.S., Magda trudged over cornfields at night into Austria; eventually she joined him in Los Angeles. By then he had met his beautician wife, Barbara. 8 Robert Edelman similarly discusses the understanding and compromise that British and Soviet leaders developed in sport. 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. Tsimanouskaya told the Associated Press her move to seek asylum was not premeditated. The wave of defections by athletes from the Soviet Union and allied states continued during the 1970s. It pains them to be here and see people beat them who they can beat if they are well taken care of.. For the diver, it seemed politics were not the primary factor at play: He reportedly defected out of love for the daughter of an American millionaire he had met at a diving meet in Florida the previous year. For some athletes, the Olympics arent just a chance to compete theyre an opportunity to defect. Olympic medalists abounded, including Bob Seagren(pole vault gold 1968 and silver 1972) and Ron Morris(pole vault silver 1960). He settled in Florida, lifeguarding and coaching divers, and went on to design swimming pools, run an adult bookstore and rent himself out as bridge partner.He told Hungarian TV in 2006 that he simply followed defecting divers Frank Siak and Joe Gerlach: "Fifty years later, I'm still here." Soviet bloc officials often sent minders to prevent their athletes and coaches from stepping out of line, so defections usually required careful planning. 16 For another perspective on how Hungarians interacted with developments in the global Cold War following the Hungarian Revolution, albeit with those in the global South, see James Mark and Pter Apor, Socialism Goes Global. 1124. 70 The International Fencing Federation did not allow Lidia Dmlky to compete at their championships because she and other athletes were not without a homeland and because on the basis of the Hungarian government's decree, they could go home. '", Siak learned English chatting up college kids at the pool in Winter Park, Fla., where he lifeguarded, then joined the Water Follies for three years before a broken shoulder forced him to quit. : 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! However, there is little information on who they were, where they were from, and where they went. Magyar Olimpiai Bizottsg. Arpad would knock off his day job at five, then hammer away until after midnight. The road to Moscow was paved with deserters, primarily because the USSR had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Of course, were nervous because were young, have no family here, and we dont yet know the way of life here, but we hope the Cuban and American communities will help us get started.. 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). 41 Most other sports, such as swimming and fencing, did not enjoy the same professional status. Earlier that year, the Communist Party had taken control of Czechoslovakia with Soviet support. : Patrons, Clients, Brokers and Unofficial Networks in the Stalinist Music World, Contemporary European History, 11, 1 (Feb. 2002), 3365CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 1958; cited from Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 176. 94 Szkely, va, Srni csak a gyztesnek szabad! Title Hungarian Olympic Committee. Instead he buckled down, earned his B.A. A photo of him in Tokyo with the medal hanging from his neck dominates the lobby of the Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia, where he coached for years. According to the Associated Press, 117 people defected at the Munich games. 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. "It sounds funny," he says, "but I thought if I could win an Olympic gold medal, there was nothing I couldn't do.". Dek Ferenc rny. In the U.S., Iogloi continued his magic, turning Jim Beatty into the first miler to run under four minutes indoors. 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. 22 On two athlete-defectors experiences in the United States, see Mellis, Johanna, Cold War Politics and the California Running Scene: The Experiences of Mihly Igli and Lszl Tbori in the Golden State, Journal of Sport History, 46, 1 (Spring 2019), 6281CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Ugandan weightlifter who went missing after traveling to Japan for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics left a note saying he didn't want to return to his home country, according to Reuters. 2021. When parents at the Bay Area club heard Zador had been an Olympian, they asked him to teach their children to swim. 80 Kdas Gza sporttrsnak, 31 May 1957, folder 1957 Uszs, 105 box, XIX-I-14-a, Magyar Nemzeti Levltr Orszgos Levltr, Budapest (hereafter MNL OL). For some examples of the relative agency of athletes in non-Western contexts and what they chose to do with it, see the contribution by Claire Nicolas in Beyond Boycotts, by Annette Timm in The Whole World Was Watching and Alan McDougall's People's Game. Selected to represent Hungary in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games, he made a life-changing decision. The history of Olympic defectors. Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 160. Peterdi, Pl, Gyarmati sors, avagy egy bal kz trtnete, (Lakitelek: Antolgia Kiad: 2007), 118Google Scholar. Using a scholarship reserved for Hungarian refugees, she enrolled at Colorado, studying dance and phys ed and competing in and coaching gymnastics. 27 Hoffman, David, Introduction: Interpretations of Stalinism, in Hoffman, David ed., Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 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. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. Belarusian Olympic sprinter who sought protection in Japan granted Polish visa. Hungarian Olympic Triumph: 1936 Berlin - American Hungarian Federation They had both tasted glory -- she as a sprint freestyler at two Olympics; he as a reserve on the water polo team in Melbourne -- but there wasn't much glitter to their first jobs in the U.S., where she worked in a bank in Beverly Hills and modeled on the side, and he served a Los Angeles architect as a draftsman. He worked as a lifeguard in Virginia, then as a masseur in the Bay Area. 45 Szcs Sndor, 3 Mar. Chronicles of an Olympic Defector Paperback - March 3, 2020 He learned to run as a kid during World War II, when he'd bolt for his life after stealing food from occupying German soldiers. } 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. She became the first person to defect at the Olympics, at least in the modern era, and a tradition was born. "Mine's bigger," she says. Stalinism Reloaded: Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary, The 1956 Revolution and the Melbourne Olympics: The Changing Perceptions of a Dramatic Story, Dictatorship of Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria, Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, Nylon Curtain Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russian and East-Central Europe. Pteri, Gyrgy, Transsystemic Fantasies: Counterrevolutionary Hungary at Brussels Expo58, Journal of Contemporary History, 47, 1 (2012), 13760CrossRefGoogle Scholar. and That's what surfing is: You go up; you go down.". 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. Two Books on Hungary's Recent Past, The Hungarian Historical Review, trans. "For years, before I'd engage in any political talk, I'd look around to see if anyone was listening," says Hernek, whose parents had spent time in custody of the AVO, Hungary's secret police. Everything that is happening now absolutely wasnt in my plans, she said. Render date: 2023-03-04T05:46:50.315Z At 80 he's still an adjunct professor of French at PCC and swims a mile each day. Marie Provaznikova coached the Czechoslovak womens gymnastics team to victory in the 1948 London Olympics. Athlete defections from Cuba, not only during the Olympics, have been common since the 1959 Cuban revolution. After selling more than 50,000 Carveboards in 35 countries, the business has ridden the go-down part of that cycle. Fewer and fewer cities want to host the Olympics. "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. For some athletes and coaches, the Games have also offered avenues to defect. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. One of the defectors was Sergei Nemtsanov, a 17-year-old Russian diver. News from the Hungarian Olympic Committee - Olympic News ", 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. Zador found himself working as a lifeguard in Oakland, Calif., for $6 an hour before eventually opening a restaurant and running a hotel. In 1956, Hungary flew 83 athletes to Melbourne, Australia. "It wasn't an easy decision -- but I hated the system and the Hungarian Communists. He represented Hungary in the Rome and Tokyo Olympics, then ran a sports shop in Budapest. An Olympic teammate returning to Hungary from Melbourne smuggled a letter from Takach to his fiance, Magda, encouraging her to escape. But the glimmer of a gold medal stoked little national pride in the 57-year-old president of the International Gymnastic Federation. 17 Kende, Pter, Mi trtnt a Magyar Trsadalommal 1956 Utn? vknyv XI. I'm just an eternal optimist, a diver from a country that had one pool with a diving board.". "And because George had gotten out, that really pushed us to try to stay in the U.S. The Czechoslovak Embassy said the Communist-led government in Prague had approved her decision to remain abroad, according to a New York Times article at the time. 106 Jelents: a Politikai bizottsgnak a testnevelsi s sportmozgalom helyzetrl, 30 Dec. 1958, Imre Ternyi, Adminisztrativ Osztly, M-KS 288.30-1958-17 .e., MNL OL. "Instead of going back a hero, making 3,000 forints a month, having a chance to go to the next three Olympics, I gave all that up to be a nobody with no marketable skills who didn't speak the language," he said before he died in April at age 77. They anglicized their Hungarian surname Domjan to Domyan. Detractors maintained that Igloi did all the thinking for his runners. Tr defected from Hungary during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. 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. Pteri, Gyrgy, External Politics-Internal Rivalries: Social Science Scholarship and Political Change in Communist Hungary, East Central Europe, 44 (2017), 30939, 313CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya is the latest in a long list of Olympic defectors Now 75, she and her husband have two children and live in Boulder. 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. The coach announced on Aug. 18, 1948, that she intended to seek asylum in the United States. Canada granted him a special visa allowing him to extend his stay. 75 Hat hnap utn ismt a Sportuszodban, NpSport, 17 May 1957, 2. team famously defected during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne after they found out the Soviet Union stamped out the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. The Olympics have served as sites of protest, platforms to isolate discriminatory regimes and theaters for Cold War tensions. 12 November 2019. Are you on Telegram? 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. "Women are stronger than men, just not as explosive," he says, citing the rigors of a nine-month pregnancy. XXI. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks during his state . An Iranian taekwondo athlete competing for the Refugee Olympic Team made her mark at Tokyo 2020 after she defeated two-time Olympic gold medalist Jade Jones. View all Google Scholar citations Shortly before the London Olympics, Provaznikova led 28,000 female gymnasts in a demonstration in Prague in support of former president Edvard Benes. What made the Kdr Era? 1951, P. 6, BTL, 3.1.9. 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. After tasting stardom, the jobs they could find in a strange country -- as an auto mechanic and a draftswoman -- paled enough to prompt the couple to return to Hungary within a year. 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. 71 K, Andrs, Lszl Tbori, A Biography: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner (Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2015), 103Google Scholar. 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. Aka Amuam Joseph, a Cameroon Karate Federation member, told CNN: Back home, they arent giving the proper training. "Maybe so," says Ray Hughes, who ran for him in California during the early Sixties, "but it got us results. 86 For some examples of scholarly work on organisations outside of the IOC that struggled to adjust to Cold War politics and maintain institutional legitimacy, see Cervin, Georgia, Nicolas, Claire, Dufraisse, Sylvain, Bohuon, Anas and Quin, Grgory, Gymnastics Centre of Gravity: The Fdration Internationale de Gymnastique, Its Governance and the Cold War, 19561976, Sport in History, 37, 3 (2017), 30931CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Philippe Vonnard and Kevin Marston, Building Bridges Between Separated Europeans: The Roel of UEFA's competitions in East-West Exchanges (19551964), in Vonnard, Sbetti, and Quin, eds., Beyond Boycotts, 84108. "The story he told me on our last visit sounded true," says former teammate Eugene Hamori, who saw Keresztes shortly before his death. 84 Rainer, Jnos, The Reprisals, New Hungarian Quarterly, 33, 127 (1992), 11827, 122Google Scholar. All that time spent watching from the shore through wide-angle binoculars stoked his curiosity about how the laws of motion affect sports and led him to develop the Carveboard. 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. Hungarian Defectors, 1956 Summer Olympics - Getty Images
