A living legend of water polo at the Olympic Memorial (video)

– What do you think of Miklós Melocco’s work, how do you like it?

“Very much so.” I saw the coverage of the handover on television, and I wondered to myself that I didn’t know about it and thus couldn’t be there at the ceremony. I have known Miklós well for a very long time, I consider him a fantastic artist. I think what he produced turned out to be beautiful this time as well.

– I understand that he knew many of the heroes of the 1952 Olympics very well. What memories does it stir in your heart when you read these names written in gold letters on the memorial?

– Yes, indeed, I have to say, I had a personal relationship with each player, either with them or against them. I can talk about water polo. It was 1952 a long time ago, but I knew several players from the national team closely. I played in the same team with Dezső Gyarmati, György Kárpáti, Antal Bolvári, Kálmán Markovits and Dezső Gyarmati were the adults, Károly Szittya was my coach in the youth team. I knew László Jeney, the goalkeeper, and Dezső Lemhényi well, he lived upstairs in the Castle: Butykó was known as a legendary, iconic figure in the swimming pool. It was fantastic company, but of course the same can be said for all other sports. I think that the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki brought a unique and unrepeatable glory to the country, which would be very difficult to surpass.

– We are in an Olympic year again. What do you expect from the five-ring games in Paris?

“It will be a strange Olympics.” I’ll start by saying that it would have been nice if it was organized here. I think that if some people don’t “figure out”, we will get the right to organize, since the so-called Eastern bloc has not yet organized an Olympics, except for the one in Moscow, which was the result of a political decision in 1980. By the way, we live in terrible times with this terrorism and migrants. I really support everyone who goes to Paris, so that the events go down peacefully and there are no problems. I have bad memories, because when I played at the Munich Olympics in 1972, a terrorist act took place. (During the Munich Olympic hostage drama, on September 5, 1972, the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September took 11 athletes of the Israeli team hostage. Two athletes died immediately during the hostage-taking, and the other hostages also lost their lives during the failed rescue operation by the German authorities. They were killed five terrorists and a German policeman was also mortally wounded – ed.) I hope that everything will be fine in Paris and, as usual, there will be crazy fans for all Hungarian athletes.

– Now there are two people standing here next to the monument who were there in Munich, since you and Lajos Kű won a silver medal then. Louis he already told FEOL, how he survived the terrorist attack. May I ask what you remember of what happened?

– We lived directly opposite the Israeli team, they were accommodated in a lower building. In the morning we woke up to the terrible news. With Endre Molnár, the goalkeeper of the national team, we went up to the roof of our own building, which was a higher strip building, to take a photo from above. Because the window remained open and you could see into the Israelis’ quarters. We saw a masked figure armed with a machine gun and wearing a hat. This is still very much ahead of me. We leaned over to take a photo, but the gunman suddenly looked up and signaled firmly that there was no photo! We retreated. It was all horrible, the Olympics stopped for a day, a day of mourning was organized in the stadium and a funeral mass was held. And then everyone wondered what would happen next? Will the Olympics continue or not? The decision was made that the games should continue, because if the Olympics stop, it is not known whether the next one will be held at all? But from that day on, the previous fantastic atmosphere of the Olympics disappeared. I took part in six Olympics in different roles, and I found that the atmosphere of the Olympics could not be compared to that which prevailed in Munich after the Israeli athletes died.

– There is not only a terrorist threat, this will be a war Olympics. The International Olympic Committee was heavily criticized for allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete without national symbols. What do you think about the fact that games have become so politicized?

– Leaders always do this. I can safely say that athletes don’t think like that, everyone in their circles is on good terms with everyone else. And the fact that the Russian athletes would not have been allowed to start? I ask: How many American athletes were banned from the Olympics while the United States went into other countries unaccounted for? No American athlete has ever been banned, nor has an artist or conductor. Their yachts were not reserved for millionaires either, if they were not anchored in an American port. A line in Baron Coubertin’s poem reads: “You are peace, Sport!” Politics should not be brought in here. When the Olympics were held in ancient times, wars stopped for the duration of the competitions. Unfortunately, it depends on the leaders, and not on the athletes, what kind of conditions will develop around the upcoming five-ring games. In addition, the French president just spoke about the need to send soldiers to Ukraine: well, I think this does not improve the situation at all.

– From Saudi Arabia to Serbia, you have worked in quite a few places in the world: what do your foreign friends think of us, of the stance with which we seem to have been left alone in the defense of peace and Christian Europe?

– I have always lived in water polo, and we definitely have a good reputation there, as we have won nine Olympics. Our most successful ball game. I have really coached in quite a few countries, in Serbia, Croatia, England, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and even in Australia for a year. There, for example, they said about the Hungarians: if you see a Hungarian jumping out of the window from the twentieth floor, jump after him, because there is a business inside! We have such news. They definitely respect us in such a way that they recognize that we have attitude. But unfortunately, politics cannot be bypassed. Other countries would follow us, but where the government is not formed by politicians with the same values, but rather by a coalition, they will not be able to surpass what we were able to do in Hungary. I’m just saying we should be proud. Only the truth matters, not whether we are in the majority with our opinion in Europe. Because the truth is the truth. The Americans are up to their necks in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but let’s not forget that 150,000 Hungarian compatriots live on the other side of the border. We are being attacked in the European Union because we do not deliver weapons to Ukraine and do not allow migrants to enter. Peace would be good: if the politicians were sent to hell, there would be nothing wrong.

– Lajos Kű has further plans here in Székesfehérvár. His goal is to preserve tradition: he wants them to teach about the heroes of Helsinki in schools, and if not in full, our athletes take their oath here before they go to the Olympics. He also wants the glory of Helsinki to be a Hungarian Heritage Award and Hungarikum. How about all this?

– I have a lot of respect for Lajos, because he so agilely cares about preserving the memory of our best athletes. I know him well, because at that time we were soldiers together in Eger with Zoli Varga, Géczi, Fazekas, and Zámbo, so our relationship is quite old. It was a sports class, with accelerated three-month training with selected players in all sports. Albert and Bene served in the tournament before us, but they only organized two such tournaments, and then no more. Back to Lajos: his agility is fantastic. He often calls me when he holds a memorial service at the graves of Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis and Gyula Grosics in the sub-church of St. Stephen’s Basilica – by the way, I also knew them personally. I respect and appreciate you, and I gladly came to Székesfehérvár at your invitation because I believe that if I can help with my presence, at least in this sense I can be a part of, a contributor to, your work and your aspirations. They are very supportive of him succeeding in realizing his ideas and I support him to the maximum, one hundred percent.