Gergely Kulcsár

athletics
bronze	1960	Javelin throw
silver	1964	Javelin throw
bronze	1968	Javelin throw

Gergely Kulcsár [ ˈgɛrgɛj 'kulʧaːr ] (born March 10, 1934 in Nagyhalász ; † August 12, 2020 ) was a Hungarian athlete who was among the world's top javelin throwers in the 1960s . He successfully participated in four Olympic Games and five European championships.

Career

He won numerous state championships (title not used before 1960):

year	1960	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1971
Width (m)	77.68	78.47	78.08	79.85	80.86	79.08	83.20	79.72	79.72	84.92

His first international appearance were the

• 1958 European Championships in Stockholm , where he won the bronze medal behind Poland's Janusz Sidło (gold with 80.18 m) and Norwegian Egil Danielsen (silver with 78.27 m) . Two years later with the
• At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome , he was able to repeat this success: after he had thrown 79.70 m in qualification, which would have meant second place, he managed a throw of 78.57 m in the finals, which was behind Wiktor Zybulenko from the USSR ( Gold with 84.64 m) and Walter Krüger from the GDR (silver with 79.36 m) won his second bronze medal. Things went less well for him with them
• European Championships in Belgrade in 1962 . Here he came in 5th place with 76.89 m (victory distance of Latvian Jānis Lūsis : 82.04 m). Two years later, with the

Kulcsár and Pauli Nevala in Tokyo, 1964.

• At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 , things went uphill again: With the silver medal for his best distance of 82.32 m behind Pauli Nevala , who was victorious with 82.66 m , he achieved his best international placement and also defeated European champion Jānis Lūsis , who was with 80.57 m came third. How close he was inferior to Nevala is shown by the following comparison of the best three litters of both athletes:

  Nevala: 82.66 m - 78.39 m - 76.42 m

  Kulcsár: 82.32 m - 78.28 m - 77.28 m

• At the European Championships in Budapest in 1966 , with a performance of 80.54 m, he was able to push Nevala by 18 centimeters to fourth place and again secure a bronze medal, but lost to Lusis (gold with 84.84 m) and Poland's Władysław Nikiciuk ( Silver with 81.76 m). He won his last medal at the
• 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City , where with an excellent 87.06 m only Jānis Lūsis (gold with 90.10 m) and the Finn Jorma Kinnunen (silver with 88.58 m) had to give way and his fourth bronze medal was allowed to take home.

From now on, the performance curve of the now 35-year-old understandably decreased. In 1969 he threw a good 83.30 m, but was able to achieve this in the

• European Championships in Athens in 1969, however, did not quite build on and finished fourth with 81.14 m ( Jānis Lūsis victory distance : 91.52 m).

He also took part in the European Championships in Helsinki in 1971 and in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich , but failed in qualifying and ended up in 15th place (76.48 m) and 14th (77.24 m).

Performance development

year	1957	1958	1959	1960	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1971
Width (m)	73.97	76.36	76.36	79.30	78.80	80.29	82.24	84.18	85.38	85.74	87.06	83.30	85.14

Web links

• https://www.olympic.org/gergely-kulcsar
• Gergely Kulcsár in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Gergely Kulcsár in the database of Olympedia.org (English)