Smuggling How-to's
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.
Uncle Schwarz (Schwarz bácsi), the man who Ihász and his teammates went to buy goods from in Vienna, was mentioned in an interview by another athlete, István Szondy. Szondy was a pentathlete (a close friend and teammate of Gábor Benedek, to be discussed later), who competed for Hungary from 1950-1956, until he defected to West Germany. The fact that two men from different sports, Szondy who competed prior to 1956, Ihász whose career lasted from 1958-1973, shows the longevity of Uncle Schwarz as a contact for athletes. It also shows how information related to smuggling was common to athletes of all sports and spanned different athletes' careers.
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.
