Sport Centre 27-02-2007
Source: SportFórum.hu

Gyula Zsivótzky celebrates his seventieth birthday!

He works with youngish energy and the celebration – his seventieth birthday which is today on the 25th February - does not find him in inactivity. Gyula Zsivótzky (in our picture) the hammer throwing champion of the Olympic Games of Mexico City is just managing his flat change in these days.

The champion rewarded with the proud title of „The athlete of the century” lives an active life. In the latest years – after the painful death of Dezső Lemhényi – he has more and more work to do as the president of Ferenc Mező Public Foundation Advisory Board dealing with high priority with the issues of Olympic champions and the former leading sportsmen and sportswomen. In spite of the fact that he is not a too talkative person, certainly he remembers with pleasure the fine old days.

- I heard it on the radio in the broadcast about the Helsinki Olympic Games that József Csernák became the Olympic champion in hammer throwing. I immediately began to be interested in it. At that time I was still in Tata at the grammar school with P.E. specialty, so my first master was from that society, in the person of the two years older – in the third year – Miklós Zlinszky. Not much time later the whole school was removed to Kiskunfélegyháza and since that time I mostly trained myself. Going to the College of Physical Education till 1966 Uncle Sanyi Harmati trained me. I had already won an Olympic silver medal in Rome (1960) but in the turn of years 1963-1964 I was between life and death.

- Half a year after the third operation you became a silver medalist in the Olympic Games of Tokyo (1964). From 1966 after the former loose cooperation József Csernák trained you again and you reached together with him the greatest success of your life.

- With two Olympic silver medals in my pocket I continued to be keenly interested in the possibility of only and solely winning in the Olympic Games. I had already thrown a world record in 1965 in the Stadium of Nagyerdő in Debrecen (73,74 m) but in 1966 in the ECh of Budapest I won again only a silver medal.  With the leading of Csernák I could arrive in Mexico City in 1968 with a 71 m average where at last I managed to gain the first place with 73,76 m.

- You still participated in the Olympic Games of Munich in 1972 but after that you disappeared from the Hungarian athletics for two decades. How did you come back to your loved sport?

- The change can mainly be thanked to my son, Attila who won adolescents’ European Championships with 221 cm in the Netherlands in 1993 in high jumping. I considered Attila from the first moment much more talented than I was and I tried to give him as much help as possible in order that he could develop his abilities. His best results are in the hardest sport, in decathlon: one silver medal in a European Championships, one bronze medal in a World Championships and a sixth place in the Olympic Games of Athens. I certainly cheer for him to win a good result in Peking in the following Olympic Games – said Gyula Zsivótzky who was the trainer of his son for several years. – I think in points, not in a place. If he beats the Hungarian record of 8555 points, I will be satisfied with him. No one can tell it for which place it will be enough.

Author: Károly Jocha