The Hungarian Olympic Committee fell because of its performance in Rio
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According to index.hu, the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) talked about a successful participation in Rio. The eight gold medals are actually not bad, but the government, primarily Viktor Orbán missed efficiency. It’s symbolic that a new sport law was proposed right after the constitutional amendment.
The 2012 London Olympic Games, which brought eight gold medals, cost State Secretary for Sport Attila Czene his job, whose post was taken over by István Simicskó. Now, after another eight gold medals, the government reorganises the whole direction of sports through the changing of the sport law.
According to the proposal submitted on Monday, the power, influence and money divider role of the Hungarian Olympic Committee would be abolished, while the State Secretariat for Sport would be significantly invigorated.
The tasks, which were assigned to HOC by the 2012 sport law, were taken back and given back to the Ministry of Human Resources led by Zoltán Balog.
Secretary for State Tünde Szabó became stronger while HOC President Zsolt Borkai weakened – this is the easiest interpretation of what happened.
Zoltán Balog, Tünde Szabó and Zsolt Borkai
It’s not clear yet whether or not the second line training will get a separate Deputy State Secretariat as the rumours formerly had it.
Different branches of sport received billions through HOC in the past four years, but this will end now. The proposer of the law is the government, more exactly Minister for Sport Zoltán Balog. He was there in Rio when the first ideas about directing Hungarian sports came up.
What happened at the Rio Olympic Games?
Hungary kept its leading role in the world with its eight gold medals, but there was no mark of euphoria. Not even at the location, because only a few fans took on the journey and no matter how hard HOC tried to frame our participation as a success story, the message didn’t make it through.
Four years ago the medals came from eight different sport events and the Hungarians were in the top 4 of two team sports. Now we only had gold medals in three sport events and only made it into the top 4 of one team sport, women’s water polo. The issues were also shown by the fact that we achieved less medals (by 2) and less points all together, and we didn’t even have an Olympic Champion under the age of 25.
Viktor Orbán wasn’t satisfied with the work of HOC, he told President Zsolt Borkai right away what he lacked: he didn’t see the signs of a strong central direction not only in professional sport, but in other departments, as well. He was told that he produced a lack of professional sportsmen and that less people started sports in the last four years as one would expect due to the increased support.
