Military World Games: Hungarian Team Finishes 38th

On October 4 the first Hungarian, Flórián Seres started a race (800m run) in the sports facility of the Korean armed forces. In the second round, he achieved the second best result in his life – 1:56.32 minutes – but unfortunately didn’t manage to get into the next round and finished 21st.

On 5 October Szilvia Szabó fought her Polish opponent at a judo event but she was defeated and therefore dropped out of further competition. Tibor Kása achieved his best time this year, 48.54 seconds during an exciting competition of the 400m run at the track and field events, but did not get into the next round, short of two places, so he was placed 26th.

On 6 October, Réka Gyulai had a bright start against her South African opponent in the judo 70kg weight category, but afterwards she was defeated by the later winner Russian competitor. In the repechage, she lost to her French opponent in a tight competition, so she finished 7th by the overall results.

Épéeist Ottó Halmai had an eventful day too, as he had to fight five bouts in order to get among the first 64, and he managed to make it. He defeated his Bahraini opponent and got among the first 32. His progress was stopped by an Argentine opponent of prestigious placing in the world championship, so he finished at the 16-32nd place. On 8 October, however, he formed a team with a Venezuelan and a German fencer, and they finished 4th.

Having improved on his previous best result, Gábor Bánszki got over the archery preliminaries and qualified as 28th for the next round, where the 32 best competitors fought duels in the single-elimination tournament. Gábor fought a fifth-placed Italian competitor for getting among the best 16, but was defeated by his opponent so the Hungarian competitor finished 17th.

The parachute team finished 6th after four jumps, but slipped to the 11th place two jumps before the end of the competition. They didn’t succeed in getting a higher placing with the last jump, so they finished 19th at the contest. In the individual category, the best Hungarian competitor, Csaba Gábor Hirschler finished 17th.

At the track and field events, Flórián Seres also entered the 1500m race after the 800m one, and by competing excellently among very strong opponents, he finished 20th with his best result this year, 4:01.45 minutes.

On 7 October, among the track and field events, Tibor Kása almost missed his own start in the 200m run because the organizers brought forward the race by two rounds. After necessarily short warm-up exercises, Kása had a poor start, so he failed to get into the finals short of 0.08 seconds. His time – 21.89 seconds – got him the 27th place. In the afternoon, András Avar surprised the other competitors during the 3000m obstacle course, and made the Hungarian supporters cheer him while achieving lead position in the first lap of the race. Eventually, Avar took the 17th place for the team with a time of 10:44 minutes, his best result this year.

At the discus event, Zoltán Kővágó defeated the current world and Europe champion, winning the first Hungarian gold medal at the Military World Games with a result of 66.01 meters. The value of his throw is shown by the fact that with this result, he would have been silver medalist at the world championship one month ago.

The closing ceremony of the Military World Games was held on 11 October. Among the 110 teams entering the competitions, the Hungarians finished 38th by the overall scores.

Photo: Tibor Vass and internet