State Sport

From the late 1940s to 1989 Hungary, like the rest of the Soviet bloc, treated sport as an affair of state. Athletes were supported, clubs were tied to state bodies, and Olympic medals were counted as national success. This produced strong results, and it also left a legacy of control, secrecy and doubt. This chapter describes the system, the results, the 1984 boycott and the questions about doping and fairness. The subject is sensitive and some of it is still disputed, so the course describes what happened and what is argued over, and takes no side. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

How the System Worked

Under the communist state, sport was organised from the top (check the details of the structures and their names, which changed over time):

• Funding and facilities. The state paid for stadiums, pools, coaches and training camps, which made sport possible for many people (check the scale).
• Talent selection. Children were tested at school and talented ones moved into sports schools and clubs, where training was intensive (check how it worked in Hungary).
• Elite support. Top athletes were often given jobs, housing or army posts that left them free to train, so that they were nominally amateurs while in practice full-time athletes (check, and compare with the amateur rules of the time).
• Control. Travel abroad and contacts with the West were tightly managed, and athletes were expected to represent the system (check; Chapter 7 gives the example of 1956).

The Great Clubs

The links between clubs and state bodies mattered because they decided who could train where, and with what resources (check). The older fencing, swimming and water polo traditions of Chapters 3 to 5 were taken into this structure and benefited from the support.

The Results

Hungary's Olympic results in this era were strong for its size (check each figure, and treat the pattern as more reliable than the numbers):

• 1952, Helsinki. Hungary's best Games in the period, with a large number of gold medals and a place among the leading nations, including the football gold (check the totals).
• 1956 to 1968. A steady flow of golds, in fencing, water polo, canoeing, swimming and others (check).
• The 1970s. A smaller but still respectable total, with other bloc nations, especially the Soviet Union and East Germany, taking an increasing share (check).
• 1980, Moscow. Hungary competed in a Games that several Western nations boycotted (check the number of nations).

The 1984 Boycott

For the Los Angeles Games of 1984 the Soviet Union and most of its allies, Hungary among them, stayed away, in what is generally seen as a response to the Western boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier (check the countries, the stated reasons and the dates). Hungarian athletes who had trained for four years lost their chance to compete (check the effect on named athletes), and the medal tables of that Games are difficult to compare with others. The Hungarian team took part instead in an alternative event for boycotting countries (check). The course describes the episode and takes no side in the Cold War dispute that caused it.

Doping and Its Shadows

Doping in the Eastern bloc has been the subject of investigations and disclosures since the end of the Cold War, most strongly in the case of East Germany, where a state programme was documented (check). For Hungary the picture is less clear. Some Hungarian athletes tested positive in the period, and later accounts suggest that the problem was present in some sports (check), but the scale and organisation in Hungary are less documented and are disputed (check). The course does not assume any individual case and does not say that all or any particular medals were tainted. It does record that the question exists, and that the later reallocation of medals (Chapter 1) was one result of re-testing (check).

Exercises