Best of Hungarian sport 2016

The year of 2016 was outstanding for Hungary concerning sport achievements. Just think about Euro2016, which moved the whole country, or the Rio Olympic Games, where our athletes kept on making history. But there were many other competitions, successes which are also worth recapping at the end of the year.

Putting together a list like this is a bit overwhelming, because you don’t want to leave anything out and, luckily, there are so many great achievements to choose from. So we thought we’d go sport by sport, and collect the greatest highlights of 2016. The list is not complete, still, the following were some of the best moments of Hungarian sport this year.

Athletics

Hungarian athlete Balázs Baji won a silver medal in 110 metres hurdles in July in Amsterdam at the 2016 European Athletics Championships, which was a huge success for Hungarian athletics. We’ve always had great thrower athletes, but it’s been some time since someone won a medal in a running event. Baji is young and talented, so he has every chance of achieving even greater successes.

At the same championship, Anita Márton finished in the second place of shot put, to later top it with an Olympic bronze medal in Rio. Also, earlier in the year, she put Hungary on to the medal table of the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics with her silver medal, which was the first Hungarian medal at an indoor championship since 1999.

Badminton

Laura Sárosi’s qualification to Rio was an outstanding success, as no other Hungarian badminton player was able to do so in 20 years’ time. She was also awarded with a Fair Play prize for her selfless act of lending her backup shoe to her opponent on a match in May.

Basketball

It was sensational news that the Hungarian men’s basketball team has qualified for the 2017 European Basketball Championship, because men’s basketball team hasn’t managed to qualify for the EuroBasket since 1999. The team’s improvement can be traced through the years, so we’ll have another team to cheer for next year.

Euro2016

How could anyone forget the amazing participation of the Hungarian national football team at Euro2016? Returning to the top European soccer tournament after 44 years, the team remained unbeaten and won the group stage, but then lost to Belgium in the round of 16. It was unbelievable how these boys moved a whole country, even people who otherwise don’t watch football. Goalkeeper Gábor Király became an icon and the Hungarian matches made it onto several lists. It was definitely the highlight of Hungarian football in recent years.

Fencing

This sport has been traditionally very successful in Hungary, and this was proved at the Rio Olympic Games. Emese Szász started everything with her gold medal in individual epee fencing, which was followed by Géza Imre’s silver medal, the men’s epee team’s bronze medal and Áron Szilágyi’s title defending gold medal. Aside from the Olympic Games, Anna Márton won a silver medal in sabre fencing, and Emese Szász won a bronze medal at the European Championships earlier this year. Moreover, the men’s sabre fencing team finished in the 2^nd place at the World Championships.

Futsal

The Hungarian national team qualified for the 2016 European Championship after an utterly gripping match against Romania. Even though, the championship itself didn’t go too well, the qualification was a very memorable moment, because everything unravelled in the last seconds.

Gymnastics

It was shocking news that the Olympic Champion gymnast, Krisztián Berki couldn’t qualify to Rio. However, he returned with great successes after a year. He won the Hungarian Championships and did very well on the World Cup series. Furthermore, a gymnastics element was named after him, which is probably the highlight of the sport this year.

Judo

Although the Rio Olympic Games didn’t go the way our judokas wanted, they returned from the European Championships with two silver medals (Éva Csernoviczki, Krisztián Tóth) and one bronze medal (Szabina Gercsák). The 2017 World Championships will be held in Budapest, so we’ll be able to cheer for them.

Kayak-canoe

This is another sport, which Hungarians have always been good at. Normally, our athletes come home with plenty of medals from all world events. For instance, they came home with the most (14) medals from the European Championships. But the highlight of the year has to be Rio, from where our female kayakers came home with gold medals from three events. One of the stars was Danuta Kozák, who’s tripling in Rio was a historic moment in Hungarian kayak-canoe, not to mention that she became the only woman besides the eight time Olympic Champion Birgit Fischer, who was able to win in three different Olympic events, and Danuta is the first to accomplish this at the same Olympic Games.

Pentathlon

The Hungarian team (Tamara Aleksejev, Sarolta Kovács, Zsófia Földházi) won a gold medal at the 2016 World Modern Pentathlon Championships in Moscow, while Sarlota Kovács doubled, because she won the individual competition, as well.