Ádám Schmidt, State Secretary Responsible for Sports Affairs of Hungary, gave a long interview to the Hungarian sports daily Nemzeti Sport, in which he evaluated the country’s sports achievements of the last four years under Prime Minister Orbán.
However, he also looked ahead in the discussion. Schmidt talked about the Hungarian government’s LA10 programme, which seeks to achieve ten gold medals for the Hungarian delegation of athletes at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California in the United States; and thus most likely finishing in the top ten of the medal table. Even György Szöllősi, the Editor-in-Chief of Nemzeti Sport who conducted the interview, suggested that it may be an overambitious plan.
However, Schmidt explained that his team has already identified 20 Hungarian athletes with the potential for Olympic gold two years later. Of the 20, he was only willing to name one, two-time gold medalist swimmer Kristóf Milák.
Furthermore, he shared that they have a special scheme in place, per which they immediately respond if any of the 370 designated athletes, monitored for likely Olympic qualification, have an issue with their physical or mental health, their family life, or difficulties arising while changing clubs. According to the State Secretary, if such a response scheme had been in place during the Paris Olympics in 2024, the Hungarian delegation could have added to their eventual gold medal tally of six.
Secretary Schmidt also talked about the ‘syphoning effect’ the virtual world has on young athletes. He identified this phenomenon as a major issue for sports in this era. He shared that investment in sporting infrastructure was one of the efforts the Hungarian government made to mitigate the problem. As he put it, parents these days are not happy to let their child play sports in venues where ‘the tap is broken, for example’.
Another way to push the youth of today away from virtual activities to physical sports is to present them with role models they are looking to emulate from the world of sports, he added. As examples, he brought up Hungarian Olympic champions swimmer Krisztinia Egerszegi and pentathlonist Michelle Gulyás, among others.
Schidt then spoke of what a potential change of government in the upcoming election would mean to sport in Hungary.
‘Those who entered Hungarian sport as an athlete, expert, or executive after 2010 view today’s privileged conditions as the norm. They do not even think about what such a change [in Hungarian government] could bring. Today, Hungarian sport is in a special position because the nation has a Head of Government [Prime Minister Viktor Orbán] who regards sports as a special area of interest. If a proposal is logical and supported by sports science, he backs it…In the last 16 years, sports has become a strategic area in the country: daily PE classes in schools, school gym and swimming pool development programme, and investment into infrastructure—all these initiatives are building upon each other,’ Secretary Schmidt told Nemzeti Sport.
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