The 11th World Games will begin with the ceremonial opening at dawn on Friday, Central European time, in Birmingham, USA, in which 58 Hungarian athletes will participate in 17 sports.
At the most recent event in Wrocław, held in 2017, the Hungarians were represented by 60 people in 13 sports and finished 11th in the medal table with six gold, four silver and four bronze medals. On the first day of competition on Friday, there will be Hungarians in roller skating, karate, dance, fin and diving, including Petra Senánszky, who won two gold medals in fin swimming in Wroclaw, in which she is a 14-time world champion. In June, the 4x100 meter relay finalist and 11th individual 50 meter relay competitor at the Aquatics World Championships in Budapest will compete in two sports, as he will also be interested in lifesaving.
Several Hungarian Olympians will participate in the World Games, among others, in the life-saving competitions, Szebasztián Szabó, the fourth world champion in pool swimming, or Zsuzsanna Jakabos, but the "biggest name" from this point of view is karate's Gábor Hárspataki, who won a bronze medal at the Tokyo Summer Games last year. .
The World Games, which feature sports not included in the Olympic program, are held every four years, like the Olympics, always in the year following the five-ring games, and since the Tokyo Olympics had to be postponed due to the pandemic, this multi-sport event was also delayed by a year.
Birmingham will be the 11th World Games, the series started in 1981 in Santa Clara, also in the United States. Hungarian competitors were in the field from the beginning, but after the 2000 sports law, a unified Hungarian team competed for the first time in Duisburg in 2005.
(Source: Source: sportrajongo.hu, mti/Photo: pixabay, mti)