Athletes Behaving Badly

Smuggling How-to's

Most athletes bought the items for family and close friends. Some became athlete-businessmen. They strategized carefully, buying and selling goods all over the world, determining which goods would get the best price in each country (alcohol in Sweden, for example, was hard to find). 

The below interview clip is from Vasas soccer player Kálmán Ihász, who was part of the gold medal-winning team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. The interview is in Hungarian, and you can find the translation here.

If an athlete played their cards right, he or she could earn a significant amount of extra income from smuggling on a truly international scale - and this during the Cold War.


One athlete-smuggler, a fencer named Gábor Erdős, smuggled goods to five different European countries in a single competition tour. See here a map that depicts his international commercial endeavors, as well as an interview clip that describes how he did it.
 

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