This was said by Viktor Finta, editor-in-chief of Tolnai Népújság and TEOL.hu, before presenting the awards to the best teams and best athletes of 2023 in the company of Attila Berlinger, the mayoral candidate of the Fidesz-KDNP in Szekszárd. The voting on the website was a huge success again this year, thousands of votes were received for the candidates. This time again, we were looking for the best of the year in four categories, women and men competed both individually and as a team. In each category, five or five candidates entered, and the winners, the best, who won the sympathy of the readers and the audience, emerged from them.
The best female athlete: Lili Anna Tóth
The 25-year-old middle-distance runner, who grew up at the Dombóvár Railway Athletics Association, enhanced the reputation of not only Hungary, but also the county of Tolna in many international competitions in 2023. As a member of the national relay team, he finished sixth at the European Cross-Country Championships held in Brussels, but won the Hungarian championship title in the 1,500-meter distance and the silver medal in the Hungarian championship in the 5,000-meter distance. The highlight of the athlete, who transferred to the Budapest Honvéd due to his higher education from Dombóvár, was the very successful World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August, where he did not reach the finals in the 1,500 meters, but he still managed to set his personal best time (4:11.08 minutes). The fact that she had a great year is no better proof than the fact that Lili Anna Vindics-Tóth, who wants to be there at the Paris Olympics, where she wants to win the 5,000 or 10,000 meters qualification. The athlete could not come to the event due to his busy schedule, we will give him the award on Saturday.
The best male athlete: Márton Böndör
Márton Böndör, who now plays sports in Győr, became an athlete of AC Bonyhád, the athletics club of the valley capital, in 2014, at the age of twelve. It quickly became clear that he is a talented young man who brought glory to the association by playing in the national team in 2016 and 2023. His most outstanding achievements: in 2017, he won the national outdoor championship with the adolescent pole vaulting boys’ team. He won the gold medal in the junior category of the 2020 Junior and Youth National Championship with a result of 501 centimeters. In 2021, he became the national champion of the U20 age group with a round jump of 500 centimeters. The real breakthrough came last year for Márton Böndör, who became the indoor Hungarian champion with an individual record of 512 centimeters, the gold medalist of the Hungarian Athletics Championship with 510 centimeters, and the club’s first outdoor national champion. His current individual record is 530 centimeters, which he achieved last June in Austria, thereby securing his place in the Hungarian national team starting at the U23 European Athletics Championships in Finland.
Photo: Mate Reka
The best men’s team: the SE karate section of Bátaszék
For decades, high-quality work has been going on in one of the strongholds of karate in the county, the excellent results of the team led by Ákos Nagy are now recognized not only at home, but also abroad. The year 2023 brought a real breakthrough for the people of Bátaszék, at the Wado-Kai European Championships in Belgium, they came up with a never-before-seen great performance: BSE bagged 5 gold, 7 silver, 6 bronze and two fifth places in the individual and team competitions. They warmed up for the continental championship at the Wado Hungarian Championship and made their dominance clear with overwhelming competition, with the exception of a few cases, there were hardly any categories in which the Bátaszék starter did not win. The students of Ákos Nagy finished the competition with a total of twenty-nine medals, 16 gold, 4 silver and 9 bronze, and finished in first place in the overall points competition. If we take into account the fact that they won a record eight gold medals in the national student Olympic finals, it is understandable why the year 2023 was included in the golden book of karate sports in Bátaszék.
The best women’s team: Tarr KSC Szekszárd U14 team
Mária Harsányi and Andrea Szabóné Kovács, the team’s coaches, only secretly hoped that they could win the girls’ youth Hungarian championship. The team from Szekszárd started the round of 16 in Miskolc with a 79-53 success against the team from Sopron, and then surprisingly lost to the team from Győr (58-62), which they defeated several times in the regular season. However, a bravura 56-44 win over Csata – thanks to the playoffs, saw the KSC girls reach the semi-finals, who rallied to beat BEAC (63-62) in a dramatic battle to advance to the finals. And here came the even bigger feat, as KSC also beat the Díosgyőrs on home soil (65-61), winning the gold medal of the 2022/2023 youth championship. Adrienn Hencsik, who scored 25 points in the final, proved to be the most valuable player of the final, Anna Pomsár was among the five All-Stars of the tournament, while Jana Kófiás proved to be the best of the Szekszárd team.
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