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• 1 2016-11-09T08:57:32-08:00 1956: Mass Defections from Hungarian Athletes 5 plain 2016-12-13T08:48:13-08:00 The 1956 Revolution had an immeasurable impact on the Hungarian sport community. As a result of the domestic turmoil at home (and probably due to their own dissatisfaction with socialist Hungary), about one-third of the Hungarian Olympic team defected after the Melbourne Games in December of 1956. Forty of them, consisting of numerous medal-winning athletes, coaches, and officials, came to the number one Cold War enemy: the United States.[1] At the same time, almost one-third of the Golden soccer team, including Ferenc Puskás, stayed abroad and found homes on professional teams like FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. It would be difficult to underestimate the impact of the defected Hungarian athletes on the development of American elite sport. Only a few of them continued their sports careers in the US.[2] Many of the defected athletes brought their skills to coaching positions at university and club sport programs, which perhaps had a more profound impact than those who continued their careers. Numerous American Olympic champions, such as Mark Spitz, were coached by the Hungarian athletes who came to the US after Melbourne.
  
  The mass defection after Melbourne can only be described as a nightmare for the Hungarian sport administration. It was one thing for athletes from the USSR and other socialist countries to learn techniques from the Hungarians. The 1956 “brawn” drain was an entirely different matter. It essentially gifted one-quarter of Hungary’s top sporting talent and knowledge to the other side of the Cold War. 
   

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  [1] The rest of the athletes who did not return to Hungary either stayed in Australia, or went to the UK. The attempt to help Hungarian athletes defect to the US occurred due to the last-minute, coordinated efforts of individual Hungarian-Americans, US journalists, the CIA, and Sports Illustrated. See Toby Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2016, especially Chapter Six.

  [2] This was due to the difficulties they faced in finding jobs that would allow them to continue training at the levels they did in Hungary (a benefit of state amateurism), the fact that it took several years to get US citizenship, and the overall struggles they incurred in adapting to life in the US.