Athletes Behaving Badly

The Ambiguity of Smuggling: A Prized Reward and Punishable Offense

The act of smuggling constituted an ambiguous space within the sphere of Hungarian elite sport. Sport leaders allowed - and even turned a blind eye to - athletes bringing in prized goods to Hungary after their travels abroad. They understood that athletes' ability to obtain hard-to-find items served as one of the prime motivators for athletes to continue working hard and winning gold medals. The goods that athletes brought in ranged from mundane (but still rare) things like nylon stockings and cloth material like lace and wool in the 1950s, to jeans and pocket radios in the 1960s and 1970s, and even computer-related equipment in the 1980s. You can see a more detailed list of goods here.

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). If an athlete played their cards right, he or she could earn a significant amount of extra income from smuggling on an international scale. One athlete-smuggler, a fencer named Gábor Erdős, smuggled goods to five different European countries in a single competition tour. A map illustrates to extent of his travels and economic exploits, particularly how he criss-crossed the Iron Curtain in order to do it.

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.

The opportunity for athletes to smuggle was not all roses and cornfields. Smuggling was an ambiguous activity because athletes could and did receive punishments for it. Athletes had to uncover and learn the unwritten rules of the game, especially when it came to bringing goods in and out of the country, in order to smuggle. Athletes almost always faced a risk when trying to bring goods in and out of Hungary.

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