Éva Székely

Éva Székely, 1956

Éva Székely [ ˈeːvɒ ˈseːkɛj ], at times also Éva Gyarmati [ ˈeːvɒ ˈɟɒrmɒti ]; (Born April 3, 1927 in Budapest ; † February 29, 2020 there ) was a Hungarian swimmer and Olympic champion .

Székely grew up as a Jew in Hungary, an ally of the Third Reich , which led to her exclusion from her swimming club after Hungary entered the war in 1941 and later to a loss of training opportunities due to a general ban on Jews from using public swimming pools, but she also up to 1944, like all Hungarian Jews , protected from deportation. She survived the German occupation of Budapest in 1944/45 in a Swiss Safe House . Their experiences during this time are documented as one of eleven fates of Hungarian Jews during the 1940s in an anthology from the 1990s.

After the liberation, Székely started swimming again. She took part in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1948 and reached the finals over 200 m breaststroke in London , but with a fourth place she missed the medal ranks; even with the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay , she only reached fifth place.

At the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 , she then won the 200 m breaststroke competition with the then revolutionary and permitted butterfly technique , each with an Olympic record in the semi-finals and finals; also because of her victory, a new definition of breaststroke swimming was decided for the swimming competitions, which excluded the dolphin technique. Nevertheless, she was able to win the silver medal with the classic technique in the breast competition at the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 . In 1957 she fled to the United States after her then-husband Dezső Gyarmati , a world-class water polo player , was almost beaten to death by the Hungarian secret police . However, she returned to Hungary with her husband and daughter a year later out of fear for her parents.

In her active career, between 1940 and 1958, she set a total of 10 world, five Olympic and 107 Hungarian records, including the first officially recognized best performance over 400 m medley . In addition to her medals at the Olympic Games, she was a ten -time student world champion and 67-time Hungarian champion.

After her active career, she worked as a trainer; the athletes she supervises have won numerous national and international titles as well as several Olympic medals.

Székely married Dezső Gyarmati, captain of the Hungarian winning team of the water polo tournament at the 1956 Olympic Games, but divorced; their daughter Andrea Gyarmati was also a world class swimmer and medalist at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich .

Székely was inducted into the International Swimming Sports Hall of Fame in 1976 and into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981. She died in late February 2020 at the age of 92.

swell

1. ↑ Olimpiai érmeseink - Székely Éva. In: olimpia.hu. February 29, 2020, accessed March 3, 2020 (Hungarian). 
2. ^ Andrew Handler: Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary ; P. 41ff; 1993; ISBN 0-531-11044-3

Web links

• Éva Székely in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (English)
• Éva Székely in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )