Page 106 - Olympism in Socialism

which receives about 400. million forints from the
state budget. Trade unions, enterprises,
cooperatives, local councils spend a great deal of
money on sports, a total of roughly 2,000 million
forints. Today there are over 4,000 sports
associations, and approximately 300,000 men
and women in Hungary engage in competitive
sports. There are 132,000 registered football
players, 36,000 athletes, 37,000 handball players
and 23,000 table-tennis players. In some large
enterprises, such as the Ganz-Mavag, some 30 to
40 football teams take part in the works
competition, and football, handball, table-tennis
and skittles contests are run at factory, office and
cooperative level in major works.
A lot is being done to promote physical
culture among the masses: competitions for
badges, Spartakiads, gymnastics lessons at the
place of work and gymnastics on television try to
counteract the unhealthy effects of sitting or
standing all day and travelling by car instead of
walking, In the case of Hungarians, all this is
made still worse by habits of over-eating. It is of
course difficult to win over adults who have
grown up in schools without a gymnasium and
therefore spent the time devoted to physical
culture sitting at their desks. Schools with sports
sections cater for the future needs of competitive
sports. In such schools there are three times as
many sports than provided in the normal
curriculum. Unfortunately we do not have
enough sports establishments, and in spite of an
abundance of water the country has only 50
indoor swimming pools. By 1981 Budapest will
have a covered stadium with many sports
facilities, seating 10,000 spectators.
In the modern Olympics, Hungary has won
105 gold medals, 94 silver medals and 116 bronze

95