Melbourne Blood Game

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As the blood game or blood bath of Melbourne , the water polo game between Hungary and the Soviet Union at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne became the most famous match in the history of this sport and one of the most famous and unsporting clashes between two teams at the Olympic Games. Both teams met at the Olympic water polo tournament on December 6, 1956 , when the Hungarian uprising had just been brutally suppressed by Soviet troops. The name of the game was invented by the media. He was referring to the Hungarian Ervin Zádor , who was bleeding profusely by a Soviet athlete two minutes before the end of the game with a punch in the face.

Hungary beat the Soviet Union 4-0. The victory of the Hungarian team became a symbol of the resistance against the Soviet Union.

background

On October 23, 1956, a small approved solidarity rally by Budapest students escalated into an uprising against the Soviet occupiers. For a few days it looked like the Hungarians could break free from Soviet influence. From November 1, Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, and between November 4 and 10, the revolution was crushed with massive use of weapons.

During this time the Hungarian water polo team was in the training camp above Budapest. The team could at least hear the turmoil in the capital. The team, defending champions of the Helsinki Games, have been moved out of the country to Czechoslovakia for the upcoming Melbourne Games . The players only found out about the events at home in Australia. Concern for family and friends accompanied the athletes. At the start of the games, the brutality in the home country increased more and more; many players now saw the opportunity to represent the independence and pride of their country on a sporting level.

Ervin Zádor confirmed this in statements such as "We did not play for ourselves, but for our whole country." At this point in time, the international community also learned of the brutality of the Soviet troops who were attacking the Hungarian population. The Hungarian team was cheered on by the previously neutral visitors to the games. There were also many Hungarians in exile among the spectators who had already watched the Hungarian boxer László Papp win his third gold medal a few days earlier.

Hungary had clearly won the first four games by four to five goals each and was considered an almost certain Olympic champion.

The game

The press gave the game little importance in the preliminary reporting; however, the game attracted an astonishing 5500 viewers, including many exiled Hungarians and Australians of Hungarian descent. The mood against the USSR team was already high before the start. The Hungarians' strategy was to insult the Russians whose language they learned or had to learn in school. In the words of Zádor: "We decided to make the Russians angry and thereby confuse them."

From the beginning, the game was very physical. Kicks and blows were given on both sides; Hungarian team captain Dezső Gyarmati injured his Russian opponent with an uppercut. Meanwhile, Ervin Zádor scored two goals, and the audience cheered the Hungarians enthusiastically with “Hajrá Magyarok” (“Forward Hungary”).

Towards the end of the game - Hungary led 4-0 - Ervin Zádor insulted Valentin Prokopow . When Ervin Zádor looked away for a moment, the Russian hit him in the face with his fist. Zádor, who suffered a gaping wound close to his right eye, then left the pool and now, with the sight of him bleeding, finally turned the audience against the Russians. Many spectators then jumped on the edge of the pool and threatened the Russians in turn. To avoid further unrest, the game was stopped one minute before the end of the game and the police began to remove the angry spectators. Pictures of Zádor's injuries were shown in the world press and led to the description of the game as a "blood-in-water game". Reports that the water turned red are considered excessive. Zádor later said that his only thought at that moment was the next game.

The Hungarians were declared the winner of the game because the team was leading when the game was abandoned. With the final victory over Yugoslavia (2: 1) they also won the Olympic tournament and secured their fourth gold medal.

filming

In 2006, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian popular uprising, the documentary Freedom's Fury was released . The film, produced by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino , tells the story of the game. Mark Spitz , who was trained by Ervin Zádor as a teenager, is the narrator.

Also in 2006 was the Hungarian film Children of Glory , for which the Hungarian-American screenwriter Joe Eszterhas wrote the script.

literature

  • Gergely Csurka, Dezső Gyarmati: "1956 - ahol mi győztünk - 1956 December 6. Magyarország - Szovjetunió 4-0" . Aréna 2000, Budapest 2006, ISBN 978-963-7046-93-3 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nikola Krastev: Hungary: New Film Revisits 1956 Water-Polo Showdown . Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty , May 5, 2005, accessed December 6, 2016.
  2. ^ A b c Robert E. Rinehart: “Fists flew and blood flowed”: Symbolic Resistance and International Response in Hungarian Water Polo at the Melbourne Olympics, 1956. (pdf, 236 kB) Journal of Sport History, 23/2, 1996, Pp. 120–139 , accessed December 6, 2016 (English).
  3. ↑ Mike Rowbottom: Ervin Zádor: Blood in the water. The Independent , December 2, 2006, accessed December 6, 2016 .