The virtual museum opens on the 100th anniversary of the first Olympic victory!

On the first of July 1924, the The draw for the Olympic water polo tournament in Paris provided Béla Komjádi's team of young talents with the most difficult opponent: the formidable British team that won the last three Olympics (1908, 1912, 1920). Given that the Hungarian polo players' first five-round adventure went very badly (they finished fifth with two defeats in Stockholm in 2012), they even had to lobby to send the team to Paris at all; and after learning about the draw, many people just muttered, it was a shame to spend money on the trip...

When the British went 3-0 in a matter of seconds, it seemed that the naysayers would be right. However, let's relive what happened 100 years ago with the help of the 1924 "exhibition" of our now-opened virtual museum:

https://waterpolo.hu/archivum/olimpia/1924/Párizs

Although the members of the national team, who played four matches under a smoke, were gutted and could not to continue to excel, and in the end they finished in fifth place again, the victory against the British showed that we are already among the best.

And in the hundred years that have passed since then, we have given infallible proof of this at least nine times: we have become Olympic champions that many times, they are also silver medalists three times and bronze medalists four times. No other nation has such a medal collection, just as Hungary is the only one that was able to stand on the podium at 12 consecutive Olympics (1928–1980), and of course only the Hungarian men's team was able to win in the different formations of water polo: in the standing game with leather ball, after the introduction of substitutions and quarters, in the plastic ball version, and after the introduction of attack time. 

The Hungarian Water Polo Association thought that it was appropriate to commemorate the heroes of the past and the recent past, so on this important anniversary the virtual museum will be opened, in which you can not only read in detail about all the Olympic performances, but also get to know all the Olympic players

"Working in Hungarian water polo, for Hungarian water polo, is both an uplifting and responsible task - said Norbert Madaras, president of MVLSZ, in this regard. - We are preparing for another Olympics in Paris, one hundred years after the first great victory - we are concentrating on the event ahead of us with every fiber of our being, but this very anniversary warns us: do we know our past? Can present and future generations relate anything to the names on the marble plaques in the lobby of the sports pool? I admit that it is really important for a youth player to be aware of who Jamesz Németh, Olivér Halassy, István Szívós older and younger, Dezső Gyarmati, Kálmán Markovits, György Kárpáti were, what an amazing winning streak Tamásék Faragó's golden team produced in the 1970s years ago - I won't mention our generations now, since the recently produced highly successful film helped a lot in recalling the past. We created this museum so that members of the water polo family and fans of the sport can read to their heart's content and can associate a picture with each player, since thanks to the MTVA's photo archive and the research work of my colleagues, with perhaps one or two exceptions, more than two hundred have once appeared in the Olympics there is a card of our male and female players with a portrait and the most important information."

Norbert Madaras added that in the year of the Olympics the focus is now on the five-hoop games, but with time also in the stories of the world and European championships you will be able to dive.

Opening page of the museum: https://waterpolo.hu/archivum/osszes