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. 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. But many remained in their adopted country. The Russian defector, Sergei Nemtsanov, was a 17-year-old diver when he disappeared from the Olympic Village during the Games. 91 I thank Harry Blutstein for sharing this evidence with me. The Olympics provide a very attractive opportunity for people to escape difficult situations at home, most often political repression, said Barbara Keys, a historian at Durham University. ", 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. The Romanian writer asked for, and received, political asylum. A sabreman who won a gold medal in Melbourne in the team event, Hamori continued to fence, winning two individual U.S. sabre titles and, in 1964, a berth on the U.S. team in Tokyo. Olympic Games Soviet State Security Colonel to Whom Hungarian State Security Officer(s) Report, 3 Dec. 1956, XVI Olympiad Melbourne 1956 Counter Espionage Targets (TS), A6122, 2776, National Archives of Australia, Canberra (hereafter NAOA). . Marie Provaznikova, a Czech who was President of the International Gymnastics Federation, was the first person to defect from the Olympics. View all Google Scholar citations Only 16, she skipped the SI tour and lived in Seattle with the family of teenage U.S. swimmer Nancy Ramey. He represented Hungary in the Rome and Tokyo Olympics, then ran a sports shop in Budapest. You come to a country of free enterprise, and you're going to bitch about someone other than you benefiting? 18 Kende, Mi trtnt, 112; Majtnyi, Gyrgy, What made the Kdr Era? Has data issue: true He decided to defect in part because he had lost a Supreme Court judgeship for making anti-Soviet rulings. Are you on Telegram? 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. The steeplechaser said he felt conditions at home seemed to be getting worse, according to the news outlet. Tnyek s Tank (Budapest: Magvet Kiad, 1982), 76Google Scholar. Yes, there was that time in 1965, the day before his wedding, that he misjudged a dive and wound up having his face reconstructed. Teams from Hungary have been in most Summer Olympic Games and every Winter Olympic Games since then. 13 This is a point made by Sylvain Dufraisse with respect Eastern European states that I take further. Now 78 and 76, respectively, Arpad and Katherine have been married 51 years, live in Beverly Hills and are devoted patrons of the L.A. Opera. Having studied chemistry at the University of Budapest, Hamori was able to hook on with a plastics company in Philadelphia for seven years, then study at Cornell before returning to Philly to earn his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Penn and then did postdoctoral work in biophysical chemistry at Cornell. After 16 months of surviving on temp jobs and unemployment benefits, he lit out for Hungary. And I really liked working. The plan worked. "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. Hungarian Defectors Story: 1956 Summer Olympics: Closeup portrait of Hungary gymnast Andrea Bodo during photo shoot in private home. Khrushchev was one of the USSRs least repressive rulers, and the Hungarians feared that life back home would change for the worse. Belarusian Olympic sprinter who sought protection in Japan granted Polish visa. 1951, P. 1011, 3.1.9. Dufraisse, Sylvain, The Emergence of Europe-Wide Collaboration and Cooperation: Soviet Sports Interactions in Europe. "She told me I should be a hairdresser," he says, "because I have an accent and I'm a fairly good-looking guy." Laszlo Nadori, Hungarian Sports Ministry Chief of Staff. The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Aquatics 19082008: 100 Years of Excellent in Sport, Holistic Approach to Athletic Talent Development Environments: A Successful Sailing Milieu, http://rtl.hu/rtlklub/hirek/XXI_szazad/videok/314174, http://nol.hu/kultura/a-tarsait-szitava-lottek-a-magyar-uszotehetseg-tulelte-az-ugato-halalt-1628457, http://index.hu/sport/2006/08/19/060816bg/, http://m.heol.hu/heves/sport/kadas-geza-a-gyorsuszobol-lett-peldakep-450770. The week before, three runners from Sudans Olympic training squad filed for asylum in Britain. 43 They were both married to other people, and he had two children. He joined coach and fellow defector Mihaly Igloi on the American indoor circuit, where meager appearance fees made for a harsh existence until he retired in 1961. 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 . 78 Tks, Rudolf, Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 19571990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14Google Scholar. 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. At the 1987 World Veterans Games in Melbourne, Hansen made a point of entering the same two events Tabori had run, in the same city, more than 30 years earlier -- and after winning gold medals in each, she gave the 1,500 medal to her coach. He coached four Olympic paddlers at a kayak club in Ohio and spent 32 years as a hydraulic engineer. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is a registered trademark of ABG-SI LLC. 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. "Maybe so," says Ray Hughes, who ran for him in California during the early Sixties, "but it got us results. "Mine's bigger," she says. Margit (Margaret) Korondi Szalay, Gymnastics. 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. Szzad, Hall a szerelmrt, RTL Klub, http://rtl.hu/rtlklub/hirek/XXI_szazad/videok/314174, 8 Sept. 2010; Tabi, Futball s politika, 64. Published online by Cambridge University Press: XXI. Women's marathoning pioneers Jacqueline Hansen and Miki Gorman flourished under Tabori, who repaid their trust with a confidence rare for male coaches of that era. The history of Olympic defectors. 59 Nick (Mikls) Martin, interview with the author and Toby Rider, 6 Nov. 2017, Pasadena, CA. 52 Blutstein, Harry, Cold War Games: Spies, Subterfuge and Secret Operations at the 1956 Olympic Games (Melbourne: Echo Publishing, 2017), 556Google Scholar. Soproni, j csillagok. 27 Hoffman, David, Introduction: Interpretations of Stalinism, in Hoffman, David ed., Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But the glimmer of a gold medal stoked little national pride in the 57-year-old president of the International Gymnastic Federation. Several Sudanese runners also sought asylum in British police stations. Parks, Olympic Games, xviixx, 4. To stop a sports career isn't easy. "You need to work hard in life. V-71031. The defectors were directed to the police station in Szeged to make a formal request for asylum. I am positively convinced that if the government did more in this field, we would have little of this disturbance, Joseph told CNN. Using a scholarship reserved for Hungarian refugees, she enrolled at Colorado, studying dance and phys ed and competing in and coaching gymnastics. Like her father, a gymnastics coach, she taught sport. In 2012, around a dozen African Olympians did not return to their home countries, suspected to have instead sought asylum in Britain. XXI. After landing in the Bay Area, he served as fencing master of the Pannonia Athletic Club, and a year later he signed on as coach at Cal. 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. 79 Gyarmati's Story, Sports Illustrated. In 1996 the Sakovicses spent a season as visiting coaches of the Harvard fencing team, living with George and his family in nearby Weyland, Mass. However, there is little information on who they were, where they were from, and where they went. But Lidia had fallen in love with fellow fencer Jozsef Sakovics, and both had been world champions, Joe in 1954 and Lidia, at age 17, in 1955. The defecting players left the hotel, bought a cellphone, contacted a lawyer and celebrated with a Cuban meal, the Miami Herald reported, according to ESPN. 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. 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. "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. card, but he charmed them by playing U.S. LPs on their record player. At 80 he's still an adjunct professor of French at PCC and swims a mile each day. 29 See Kornai, Jnos, Economies of Shortage (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1980)Google Scholar. By then he had met his beautician wife, Barbara. 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. University of Florida, 2018, 578, 3201, 3345. Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola and Quin, Grgory, Divided but not disconnected: Studying a New Paradigm for the History of Sport during the Cold War, in Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grgory, eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruter Oldenbourg, 2018), 5Google Scholar. Dek Ferenc rny. I loved the man.". They were a common thing of the Cold War, which saw a number of sportspeople from the Eastern bloc and the USSR seize the opportunity of a sports competition in the West to stay away from their country.iii At the 1956 Melbourne Olympic games, which took place less than 2 weeks after the Hungarian revolution and its violent repression by the Red . Some of the soccer players who defected in 2008 under a U.S. policy that allowed Cubans to obtain asylum upon reaching American soil went on to play for other teams. 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. team famously defected during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne after they found out the Soviet Union stamped out the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. In 1956, Hungary flew 83 athletes to Melbourne, Australia. Cooper, Thomas (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After winning national breaststroke titles in 1958 and '59, she enrolled at Seattle University, studied chemical engineering and then joined Boeing, where she created gold paint that wouldn't flake off the tails of Continental's planes. "It was a very hard decision to go home," says Lidia, who in 2004 received the Hungarian Olympic Committee's lifetime achievement award. Decorated Kenyan runner found stabbed to death; police say her husband is a Olympic officials wont push China on human rights ahead of Beijing Games, A cyclist won silver in the Tokyo Olympics. 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). Jack Kelly, brother of Grace Kelly, helped arrange a coaching position for Torok in Philadelphia, but within months he returned to Hungary to tend to his sick mother.He has since died. Everything that is happening now absolutely wasnt in my plans, she said. 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. 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. Now 75, she and her husband have two children and live in Boulder. "My talents would have been wasted or not recognized if I hadn't come to the U.S. Four Congolese team members, including a technical athletic director and coach, also didnt make it back to their home nation after the Olympics end. But whatever's happened the last 55 years, there hasn't been a moment I've regretted it. When the games finished, Moraru decided that he liked the San Diego sun. Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-74dff Fax +36 1 386 9670. "It's a skateboard that works like a surfboard," says Gerlach, who's 73 and lives in Ontario, Calif. "A board that can ride uphill. All Rights Reserved. . [3] Lima single dikeluarkan daripada album; "Won't Stand Down", "Compliance",[4] "Will of the People . Phone +36 1 386 8000. 55 The stance of sport leader Gyula Hegyi also proved crucial for athletes wanting to defect. Thousands were killed and wounded, and hundreds of thousands fled the country. The Olympics have served as sites of protest, platforms to isolate discriminatory regimes and theaters for Cold War tensions. It pains them to be here and see people beat them who they can beat if they are well taken care of.. Pteri, Gyrgy, Transsystemic Fantasies: Counterrevolutionary Hungary at Brussels Expo58, Journal of Contemporary History, 47, 1 (2012), 13760CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He had a family back in Hungary, but he seized the chance to start a new life in the U.S. and asked a returning Olympian to give his wedding ring back to his wife. Brny Istvn urnak, 5 July 1957, folder 1957 Uszs, box 105, XIX-I-14-a, MNL OL. Czechoslovakia had recently become a satellite of the Soviet Union, and Provaznikova knew her country wouldnt be the same. 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. Hungarian Olympic Committee chairman Pal Schmit said Hungary is willing to help Comaneci. The prosecution found evidence of Szcs's signature on forms that acknowledged his understanding of these laws. In 1972 he moved to New Orleans, where he taught at Tulane Medical School, presided over a local fencing salle and, with his former wife, Annemarie, also a Hungarian migr, raised two daughters, both doctors. They already have as many as I do." Rider, Cold War, 122, 129. He won national sabre titles in three of his first five years in the U.S. while fencing for his Olympic coach and fellow defector, George Piller, at San Francisco's Pannonia Athletic Club and across the bay at Cal. Fights broke out between players, and Hungarian water polo star Ervin Zador exited the pool with blood pouring from his head after a Soviet player hit him. So, with an art history master's degree from the University of Budapest, he enrolled at USC but played only one semester of water polo because he found the sport there "too Mickey Mouse." Szzad, Hall a szerelmrt. He retired to Miami, where he died in 2004 at 85. While sport leaders recognised the need to soften their policies towards athletes, athletes learned that socialist Hungary, and not the capitalist West, oftentimes offered them the best opportunities for their sport career and desired lifestyle. But I was so homesick for my mother. 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. 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. As Japan prepares for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it is important to look back at the extraordinary story of the last time Japan hosted the Summer Games in 1964. . 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. (2003), Magyarorszg a Jelenkorban (Budapest: 1956 Institute), 917, 12Google Scholar. The nation was not invited to the 1920 Games after World War I . Hungary had to withdraw its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to avoid a humiliating defeat in the race with Paris and Los . 75 Hat hnap utn ismt a Sportuszodban, NpSport, 17 May 1957, 2. vilghbor utn A kommunista diktatra viszonya a hazai labdargkhoz 1956-ig, Palette: I. j- s Jelenkortrtni Tudomnyos Dikkonferencia, ELTE BTK j- s Jelentkori Magyar Trtneti Tanszk, The Communist Rule in Polish Sport History, Romania at the Olympics: Women Gymnasts as Ambassadors in Sportswear, 1950s1970s, The People's Game: Football, State and Society, Des sordides actes de spculation: traces de circulations conomiques dans les dlgations sportives sovitiques (19671982), Sport Under Communism: Behind the East German Miracle, Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe, The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War, The Emergence of Europe-Wide Collaboration and Cooperation: Soviet Sports Interactions in Europe. Hernek and Mary Ann DuChai, who was a U.S. Olympic tandem kayaker in Rome, have three children, and they've spent 50 summers running a riding resort on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In 1976, four Romanians and one Russian sought refuge in Canada. 1 Gyarmati's Story, Sports Illustrated, 8 Apr. 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. Tabi, Futballistaper, 31. They anglicized their Hungarian surname Domjan to Domyan. Two Hungarian athletesa canoeist and a marksmandefected in 1964 and later found sanctuary in the United States. 9 The Disney film enabled viewers to leave with a moral message and a feeling of uplift about the United States's Cold War victory after 9/11. In one sense, Arpad Domyan completed his transit of the American Dream in the late '70s. By the eve of the 1956 Olympics he had set a world record in the 1,500 meters and become the third miler to break four minutes. The 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, were held just weeks after Soviet tanks and troops crushed an uprising in Hungary. 'Olympic defectors' In the Olympics, such disappearances are so frequent that these athletes are often addressed as "Olympic defectors''. "And because George had gotten out, that really pushed us to try to stay in the U.S. He went on to become U.S. Olympian, serving as coxswain of the men's eight that won gold at the 1964 Games. She became the first person to defect at the Olympics, at least in the modern era, and a tradition was born. in French in three terms and, after earning a Ph.D. in Romance languages at Princeton on a Woodrow Wilson scholarship, became a professor. 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. The Hungarian Olympic team heard the news after they landed in Melbourne, and many planned to not go back, according to a report by The Washington Post. 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. 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. 67 Interview with Lszl Tbori; Interview with Nick Martin. "She got to be at the Olympics on a national record relay . 44 Szcs Sndor rny. But on the whole, life was good: a leap out of a hot-air balloon above Schaefer Stadium at halftime of a Monday Night Football telecast in 1972; a gig opening for Evel Knievel in the mid-'70s; his name on a marquee on the Vegas strip: jumpin' joe's sponge plunge. 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). 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. 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. 49 The additional penalty never appeared in the Magyar Kzlony, which informed the public about changes to the Hungarian penal code.