The Hungarian Paralympic team had quite a lucrative day in Paris, France yesterday, Thursday, 5 September. They ended the day with no fewer than five medals: two golds, one silver, and two bronzes.
Long jumper Luca Ekler, Tokyo’s reigning champion of the event, started off the day by winning a gold for Hungary. She won with a 556-centimetre (18 feet two inches) jump. That fell short of her result in the last Paralympic games (which was a Paralympic record with 563 centimetre, that is, 18 feet five inches), but that was mostly due to the heavy rainfall during the event.
Table tennis player Péter Pálos delivered the next medal for Hungary with a third-place finish. Impressively, this is his fourth (!) consecutive Paralympics where he came home with a medal. He won two golds so far (in 2012 in London and in 2021 in Tokyo), as well as two bronzes (in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and in 2024 in Paris).
It was our swimmers’ turn next—traditionally, Hungary has always performed really well in this sport at the Olympic games. Zsófia Konkoly did her job in keeping with that tradition, and won the 200-metre medley women’s event in the SM9 category. This was her second gold in Paris already, having also won the 400-metre freestyle event a week earlier. Meanwhile, Bianka Pap won a medal of her own in another 400-metre freestyle event, a bronze in the S10 category.
‘After I won a gold on the first day, I was thinking I would not go home empty-handed, which made me loosen up a lot. Then, I woke up thinking that I wish I could make it onto the podium. Now, I woke up thinking I wish I would win a gold,’ Konkoly said after her second victory in Paris, as quoted by the Hungarian sports daily Nemzeti Sport.
And the day was not done just yet.
Our women’s team foil in wheelchair fencing won a silver, only narrowly falling short to the heavily favoured Chinese team in the final. Zsuzsanna Krajnyák, Éva Hajmasi, Boglárka Mező, and Amarilla Veres made up the team.
Hungary currently sits in 30th place on the Paralympic medal table with three golds, two silvers, and three bronzes.
Two-time gold medallist swimmer Konkoly has one more final coming up later today, in the 100-metre butterfly event, so we have a very good chance of adding medals to our tally. However, it is unlikely that Hungary will be able to match the outstanding result of the Tokyo Paralympics three years ago, when our country’s delegation came home with a total of seven gold medals. Only three more days of events are left on the schedule for the Paris games.
Interestingly, five out of the total six medals won by Hungary at the 2024 Paralympics so far came on the same day.
China is leading the medal table with 74 gold medals, twice as many as Great Britain has in second place (37). The United States is in third place with 27 golds, as of the time of writing this.
After this article was published, long jumper Petra Luterán won the silver medal for Hungary in the T47 category. Congratulations!
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