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• 1 2016-12-12T11:49:36-08:00 Smuggling: Learning the Rules of the Game 8 plain 2016-12-14T10:52:24-08:00 Sport leaders did not want athletes to bring in too many goods. Party leaders feared that athletes would take too much advantage of their elite status in society, and end up displaying greedy behavior and not consuming on a rational level. Athletes were, after all, supposed to be model socialist citizens for the rest of society. The issue was further complicated due to the laws about how much foreign currency individual Hungarians were legally allowed to possess. Athletes could and did get punished for smuggling too many goods (or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time). Punishments typically consisted of being suspended from international competition for 1-3 years. If you couldn't travel abroad, it set limits on achieving athletic success. Without athletic achievements, it was hard to prove your worth to the state, and receive your material privileges as a star athlete. Importantly, it also eliminated any opportunity to smuggle. The topic of smuggling quickly became a murky issue for both sport leaders and athletes. For athletes, it was more difficult to learn sport leaders' limits on smuggling, to determine what was the "acceptable" amount of goods to smuggle, than any of the other rules of the game. Outside of when they won a gold medal, athletes could never predict with any certainty whether he or she would undergo a thorough search of their bags by the customs' authorities at the border.
  
  Kálmán Ihász describes in more detail his experience with bringing goods across the border, including how being a member of the beloved Vasas team helped "smooth" over his smuggling. His reasoning was corroborated by several other athletes.
  
  Fencer Gábor Erdős, the exemplary athlete-businessman, explains in this clip what happened when an athlete got caught smuggling. He also mentions how an athlete's sport success, such as an Olympic gold medal, typically helped a him or her receive a lighter punishment.