The new national stadium in Budapest was opened for the Hungarian Championships in July. It should now also be full for the World Cup.
Photo: imago/Attila Volgyi
It’s something to sit these days in Budapest’s magnificent Café New York, under crystal chandeliers between marbled columns, to think about the upcoming World Athletics Championships in the new “Nemzeti Atlétikai Központ” stadium, five kilometers away, while listening to coffeehouse music.
The oval is right on the Danube, is a jewel box for which the Hungarian government has spent a total of 310 million euros. But Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has much bigger plans: “Orbán would like to bring the Olympic Games to Budapest,” says freelance sports journalist Botond Csepregi. However, the citizens are not going along with it as easily as the right-wing conservative head of government would like. Orbán once forestalled a planned referendum from the population, which was directed against such multi-million dollar stadium constructions with at the same time structurally dilapidated conditions in the areas of transport, education and health care, by withdrawing the application for the 2024 games. But giving in is not his style. Orbán has wanted to run his country without the influence of the EU for years and still pocket the money from the Union.
The power politician is also an influential mastermind in sport. Why is he investing so much money in the sport? “He’s obsessed with sports, firmly convinced that sport creates a sense of community and national pride,” says government-critical journalist János Kele. With his national conservative, right-wing populist party Fidesz, Orbán wants to establish Hungary as an internationally important place for sport. A number of major events have therefore recently taken place in Budapest: important football matches in the Champions League and the 2021 European Championships, partly during the corona pandemic, the 2022 World Swimming Championships, an Olympic wrestling qualifying tournament and the men’s handball European Championships in the previous year.
So now the World Athletics Championships are being used as the next propaganda tool. Tamas Kiss (66), who came to Stuttgart as a coach from Nyíregyháza in 1992 and has been working there as a national base coach ever since, knows athletics in his home country in detail. “Hungary has always had exceptional throwers and has been particularly successful in hammer throwing,” says Kiss, who was able to form Marie-Laurence Jungfleisch and Fabian Heinle into two medal winners at the 2018 home European Championships in Berlin. He has also celebrated international successes with Hungarian athletes.
In fact, six hammer throw Olympic champions come from Hungary. But Kiss also knows about the special doping history of the discus and hammer throwers: Robert Fazekas and Adrian Annus, for example, had traded doping bans with the creative, but ultimately blown »Hungarian method of the casting machine«. They gave clean foreign urine out of a hidden artificial bladder and fooled the inspectors for so long. Kristián Pars, 2012 Olympic hammer throw champion, has been banned after testing positive for cocaine. “All of this has done a lot of damage to the image of Hungarian athletics,” knows Tamas Kiss.
But he also knows the good stadium infrastructure in his home country, with six modern lanes alone in Budapest, Győr, Tatabánya, Pécs, Szolnok and Szeged. “Of course, Orbán tries to win votes through sport,” says Kiss. A large part of its majority, however, comes from the area of pensioners and people who live beyond their own borders. Hungarian society has long been deeply divided politically. The enthusiasm for athletics is still great, so he expects a full stadium, says Kiss. Not like last year in Eugene, when the seats in the small US town weren’t sold out.
The role of the German athletes will again be rather modest. The disappointment of Eugene 2022 with only two medals by long jumper Malaika Mihambo (gold) and the women’s 4 x 100 meter relay (bronze) was followed by 16 medals at the home European Championships in August last year in Munich, as sprinter Gina Lückenkemper , javelin thrower Julian Weber, distance runners Konstanze Klosterhalfen and Richard Ringer as well as decathlete Niklas Kaul won gold and, together with more than 300,000 spectators in the old Olympic Stadium, ensured a summer fairy tale.
But what is this worth on a global scale? “Of course we wanted to be more successful than in Eugene, but the injuries are thwarting our plans,” says the President of the German Athletics Association, Jürgen Kessing, who is now rather pessimistic. The list of injuries in the DLV has recently become longer and full of celebrities: Malaika Mihambo, Alexandra Burghardt, Lisa Mayer, Bo Kanda Lita Baehre, Johannes Vetter, Konstanze Klosterhalfen, Hanna Klein and most recently Lea Meyer and Katharina Trost have canceled.
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So only a few medal candidates remain. As second in the world rankings, javelin thrower Julian Weber (Mainz) is the great hope, discus thrower Kristin Pudenz (Potsdam) is good as Olympic and European second for precious metal, but it won’t be easy. The two decathletes Niklas Kaul (Mainz) and youngster Leo Neugebauer (Leinfelden) are probably the last hopes for a medal as European champions and the best of the year in the world. There is little space or staff for the usual surprises.
The stars of the World Cup will be different again: US sprinter Noah Lyles could put his stamp on the title fights as well as pole vault high-flyer Armand Duplantis (Sweden), hurdles ace Femke Bol (Netherlands), Jamaica’s sprinter Shericka Jackson or the Norwegian running faction around Jakiob Ingebrigtsen and Karsten Warholm. The biggest headlines this year were written by the outstanding Kenyan runner Faith Kipyegon, who set three world records over 1500, 3000 meters and the mile within seven weeks. With further records she could now give shine to the World Cup.
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