With a fantastic performance, Michelle Gulyás became an Olympic champion in the women’s modern pentathlon on the final day of the Paris Olympics, securing the sixth and final gold medal for the Hungarian delegation. The 23-year-old athlete could not wear her trademark Ferrari cap during the last event, however, she remained unbeatable even without it. Read our profile about this exceptional female athlete!
Michelle Gulyás crossed the finish line wearing a snow-white baseball cap and became Olympic champion in Paris, where, due to sponsorship regulations, she was not allowed to wear her usual Ferrari cap during the run. Michelle is a big Formula 1 fan and had been wearing the cap for a long time. When she first wore it in a competition, she achieved the best performance of her life (up until now), and it became her lucky charm.
She has another lucky charm: in fencing, she usually wears sports socks with the Real Madrid crest, which also brought her luck in the past. The idea came when her younger brother was watching a Real Madrid match, where the Spaniards played brilliantly, and she bought herself such a pair of socks afterward.
The 23-year-old pentathlete is a true global citizen: she was born in London, her sister in Oman, and her brother in Milan.
She had an adventurous childhood. Her father, a senior oil industry expert, often worked abroad for extended periods, and during these times, the family accompanied him. Michelle was born in London, attended kindergarten in Milan (and briefly in Hungary), started primary school in Slovenia, and finally completed it in Hungary, where she also finished secondary school. Although everyone in her family is an economist, she was drawn to the humanities. And to sports! When asked about how she became an athlete, she said that someone noticed her agility on the playground as a child, and encouraged her mother to take her to gymnastics. Her mother heeded the advice and took the then five-year-old girl to the gymnastics club of Postás SE, where she was introduced to the sport and remained for six years. She practiced gymnastics in both Hungary and Slovenia.
At the age of 12, she felt that a sport judged by points was not really for her and longed for something with more straightforward feedback. She switched to modern pentathlon, for which gymnastics provided an excellent foundation. It gave her a sense of rhythm and movement coordination for fencing, swimming, and horse riding, as well as endurance for swimming and running, and focused attention for shooting. According to Michelle, modern pentathlon does not mean that athletes merely dabble in five different sports and hope that things work out in one or two.
They train so intensively in each event that with a little extra effort, they could become swimmers, fencers, runners, shooters, or competitive horse riders.
Despite the five daily training sessions, during her university years, she still managed to fit in some fun, cinema, or theatre into her daily routine. She chose a uniformed career because she knew that both the military and the police strongly support athletes, and modern pentathlon is somewhat of a ‘uniformed’ sport.
The Hungarian Police congratulated her in a special post on social media:
While studying to become a detective at the Faculty of Law Enforcement at the National University of Public Service, her successes kept coming. Both at university and on the sports field.
She is the typical case of a good student and a good athlete. She defended her thesis with a top grade, and even put her athletic career on hold in 2023 due to her state exam, skipping the World Cup final in Ankara. She won silver and bronze medals at the senior World Championships, bronze at the European Championships (and previously gold and silver at youth and U19 World Championships), and as a rookie Olympian, she placed 12th in the modern pentathlon at the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
While preparing for the Olympics, she helped with recruitment through promotional talks and actively participated in organizing university sports competitions.
She has already applied for a master’s programme at the National University of Public Service, where she will focus on cybersecurity.
Michelle Gulyás won Hungary’s first gold medal in modern pentathlon since Zsuzsanna Vörös’ victory in Athens in 2004, marking the tenth Olympic triumph in the sport.
She is adamant about not abandoning her career and studies in law enforcement, however, now she has an entire country supporting her in continuing sports as well. While this could prove difficult to anyone else, she proved that she is more than capable of balancing the two. The team at Hungarian Conservative wishes her success on both of her fields: being criminally good at modern pentathlon while catching criminals.
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Sources: Hungarian Conservative/police.hu
