The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France is entering its dying embers, with only one weekend of events left to be played out. With that, it is a good time for an assessment of how the Hungarian delegation has performed so far; as well as taking a look back at the most memorable moments of the games.
Let’s start with the bare facts.
Hungary is currently sitting in 13th place on the Olympic medal table, with four golds, three silvers, and four bronzes.
13th place out of the 206 competing national delegations is a commendable result, especially given the fact that the countries that are ahead of us—with the exception of New Zealand directly ahead of us in 12th place—have much bigger populations.
We are also first in our region, with Romania in 15th place, Ukraine in 16th place, and Croatia in 22nd place being the best-performing Eastern European nations behind us.
But we are still running behind our position on the all-time Summer Olympic medal table, where we are currently ranked eighth (!) with 181 Olympic golds won. However, that is more due to the historic overperformance of Hungarian athletes compared to the country’s population size and economic opportunities, rather than the underperformance of the current delegation.
Prior to the Olympic games, the premier Hungarian sports daily Nemzeti Sport projected 8 gold medals, 8 silvers, and 9 bronzes for Hungary. While there are still plenty of events with a chance for Hungarian medals, that projection seems to be proven a bit too lofty.
We still, however, can match the gold total of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics,
when our delegation came home with six first-place finishes, along with seven silvers and seven bronzes, thus eventually placing Hungary 15th on the medal table.
The most attention is on our male water polo team, who are facing Croatia in the semi-final this evening. Since the Hungarian Golden Generation won three consecutive Olympic golds in this event between 2000 and 2008 (as commemorated in the 2023 sports documentary Golden Legends), men’s water polo has always been a fan favourite event for Hungarians at the Summer Olympic Games.
We also have a number of canoeing and kayaking events on the schedule with Hungarian athletes in contention for medals—these water sports have also been historically very lucrative for our country in terms of Olympic medals.
As for individual performances, swimmer Kristóf Milák has been the standout athlete on the Hungarian Olympic team until now. He is the only one to have won more than one medal, having won the Men’s 100m Butterfly event after placing second in the Men’s 200m Butterfly event. Open water swimmer Dávid Betlehem delivered a fourth-place finish and a bronze medal as well.
What Stuck with the Fans the Most at the Paris Olympics So Far
By far the story that got the most media attention in the Olympics is
the case of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who was allowed to compete in the women’s event
despite being barred from doing so by the international boxing body IBA for failing to meet undisclosed eligibility criteria.
As it turned out, Khelif was born with female genitals but XY chromosomes. She is boxing for the gold later tonight—her story, as well as her match against Luca Hámori of Hungary have been covered extensively by our website.
Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikeç has received a lot less mixed and a lot more positive attention. He became an international fan favourite and meme sensation—similarly to Martin Ádám at Euro 2024—for competing in the Olympics without advanced gear, such as specialized eyewear and heavy ear protection. Instead, he won silver in the Mixed 10m Air Pistol event while wearing his regular prescription eyeglasses and small earbuds that were not visible in the footage. People everywhere fell in love with his casual style. Thus, this shooting event became a rare case where no one remembers the winner, but everyone remembers who came in second.
In another memorable moment at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh broke the women’s record in her event that stood for 37 years, clearing a 2.10-metre (6 foot 11 inches) jump, evidently earning her the gold.
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