Jewish athletes competing in Hungary honor 1st Jewish Olympic champion


(JTA) — Athletes participating in the Maccabi Europe Games are scheduled to unveil in Budapest a new commemorative headstone at the grave of the first Jewish Olympic champion, Alfred Hajós.

The ceremony will take place Wednesday at the Hungarian capital’s Kozma Street Jewish Cemetery, according to a statement published on Saturday night by the organizers of the Maccabi Europe Games, a Jewish sporting event that is held every four years and that this year is being hosted in Hungary.

One participant, marathon runner Peter Hajdú, 65, is running 331 miles from Prague over 10 days to the opening ceremony Tuesday.

Hajos, born Arnold Guttman, was a swimmer, soccer player and architect who won the swimming competition of the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, the first modern edition of the Olympics. He competed and won in two out of three Olympic swimming events, freestyle 100 meters and 200 meters, that were held in the chilly waters of the Mediterranean Sea in early April.

It made Hajo, who died in 1955, both the first Jewish Olympic champion and the first Hungarian one.

The third contest, freestyle 500 meters, was held too close to the first two for Hajos to recuperate and compete. It was won by Paul Neumann, a Jew from Austria who became that country’s first Olympic champion. He died in 1932.

The week-long event that opened Monday features delegations from across Europe competing in some 20 categories, including chess. The game’s ceremonial flame will be lit by Judit Polgár, a Hungarian-Jewish grandmaster who is widely-considered the strongest female chess player alive.

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