Hungarian Olympic Triumph: 1964 Tokyo

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Rejto Ildiko:(b. 5/11/1937 Budapest)

A Triumphant “Handicapped” Icon,  winner of 7 Olympic Medals, and still a Champion in 1999!
Among followers in the small world of fencing she is an icon and Hungary’s third “handicapped” Olympic Gold Medalist, following in the footsteps of the 1936 Waterpolo Gold Medalist Oliver Halassy who was missing a leg and 1948 shooting Gold Medalist Karoly Takacs who was missing his former shooting right hand.

Born deaf, Ujlaky-Rejto Ildiko became the best female fencer in the world, peaking  in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She began fencing at the age of 15 and coaches communicated with her by instructions written on a piece of paper between her fencing sessions. Ildiko won the junior world foil championship in 1956-57, was the Hungarian foil champion in 1958, and was the World foil champion in 1963.

Rejto participated in FIVE Olympics – 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 – and won 7 medals:

• 1960 – team silver
• 1964 – individual and team gold
• 1968 – team silver; individual bronze
• 1972 – team silver
• 1976 – team bronze

She has continued to compete and in 1999, Ildiko won the women’s foil (over 60 years old) at the World Veterans Championships!  Rejto’s name is sometimes mistakenly spelled as Rojto.

Ildiko Rejto is not the only “handicapped” Hungarian Olympic Medalist. Shooter Karoly Takacs, the “Right-Handed Shooter Who Won With His Left Hand,”… became the first repeat winner of the rapid-fire pistol event, taking Gold Medals in 1948 and 1952. A Sergeant in the Hungarian Army, Takács lost his right hand when a grenade malfunctioned. He was unable to compete in 1940 and 1944 as the war interrupted the Olympic Games and first competed at the age of 38. Amputee Oliver Halassy won two Gold Medals in Waterpolo in 1932 and 1936 and a Silver in 1928.

Iolanda Balas (Balazs):(b. 12/12/1936 Transylvania)

She dominated like no other…
Iolanda Balas (Balázs Jolán) completely dominated women’s high jumping between 1957 and 1967. Balas, a Rumanian citizen of Hungarian origin born in Transylvania in 1936 (the former Hungarian region transferred to Rumania after World War I at the Treaty of Trianon), was married to her coach and fellow high jumper Janos Sőtér(Ion Soeter) who died in 1987. Iolanda Balas occupies a special niche in athletics history, a class apart. For a whole decade she went unbeaten winning an incredible 140 consecutive competitions and breaking the world record 14 times, mostly her own.

Her 1961 record of 1.91 metres remained unbeaten for ten years.  She captured Olympic titles in 1960 and 1964 by huge margins, and such was her supremacy that at the time she cleared 1.91m, no other woman had gone higher than 1.78m. Some of her luckless contemporaries complained that they had no chance against her because she was so very tall (1.85m, or nearly 6ft 1in) with particularly long legs even for that height. But that physical advantage was largely cancelled out by her inability to master the more efficient straddle and western roll techniques of the pre-Fosbury Flop era. She explained: “My style is quite obsolete but it suits my body structure.” She is now a leading international official.

Read more at the International Association of Athletics Federations or at the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Heroes

One thousand years of nation building successfully delineated groups in Central and Eastern Europe on culture, religion, geography, and other attributes, creating many historic nation-states. While some Western European nations would continue power struggles and princely battles and civil wars, Hungary, founded in 896, was a peaceful multi-ethnic state for a 1000 years and her borders were unchanged…. Until 1920 where new states were drawn by Western powers aiming to expand their own hegemony rather than respect the right to self-determination.

These “Hungarian Olympic Triumph” pages contain many examples of Hungarian Olympic Champions that were born within the boundaries of historic Hungary. But many of these cities, towns, and villages are no longer within Hungary. Historic communities declined. Forced removals such as the Benes Decrees and other pograms, the effects of WWI, and Trianon in 1920 ethnic cleansing, and continued pressure and discriminative policies such as the 2009 Slovak Language Law, continue to take their toll. Ironically, Ferenc Kemeny, one of the founders of the Olympic Movement and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) first Secretary, was born in Nagybecskerek, Hungary in what is now known as Zrenjanin in the Vojvodina part of Serbia after the Treaty of Trianon.