How Did Hungary Get So Good at Water Polo?

Arriving home a world champion in the summer of 2023, Hungarian water polo player Vince Vigvári enjoyed a taste of the rock-star life. After a long-haul flight from Fukuoka, Japan, Vigvári and his teammates hopped on a bus to a victory rally, attended by thousands, at a Budapest pool. The players signed autographs and snapped pictures with jubilant fans. A few weeks later, Vigvári went to a music festival in Lake Balaton, in the western part of the country. “At least 50 people came up to me to take a picture,” says Vigvári, 21. “Random people. Young girls and guys, middle-aged women, men. It was definitely something very special. I can’t lie. It was a good feeling.” 

Water polo, a sport that receives scant attention in the United States—and in most other countries around the world—is a national pastime for Hungarians. To wit: the final score of the 2008 Beijing men’s final—Hungary 14, United States 10—was announced during Sunday mass in Transylvania, the region of Romania where many Hungarians live. Hungary has won nine men’s Olympic gold medals, more than twice as many as the next most successful country, Great Britain (4, more recently in 1920). Hungary also owns four world-championship titles, tied with Italy for tops on the planet.

Certain countries have developed surprising proficiencies in certain niche Olympics sports. South Korea, for example, dominates women’s archery, the majority of Turkey’s golds have come in wrestling, and Russians have won every gold medal in artistic (née synchronized) swimming since 2000. Hungary has made its splash in water polo, calling to mind a question: how did a landlocked eastern European country, with a population of some 9.6 million people—or a little more than that of the Chicago metropolitan area—become so good at an aquatic sport that plays like soccer on water, except that players can use their hands to pass and shoot at the goal, saving their feet for kicking in chlorine?

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A key factor in establishing water polo, which started in Great Britain in the late 19th century, in Hungary was its abundance of thermal springs. (There are more than 1,300 of them in the country today.) The warm water helped foster an aquatic culture and enabled players to train for longer periods during the year. “If you can stay in the pool to practice when the water temperature is 80, 85 degrees, your fundamentals, movements, and coordination will improve a lot,” says Dénes Kemény, who coached the Hungarian team to three consecutive Olympic gold medals from 2000 to 2008. “We had this advantage over countries who could play in sea, lake, or riverside only four, five months a year.” 

Hungary also innovated. According to Gergely Csurka, press officer for the Hungarian Water Polo Federation and author of a 500-page book on the history of the sport in the country, in 1913—a year after Hungary competed in its first Olympic water polo tournament, in Stockholm, and lost in the first round—some players went to watch a circus in Budapest. They saw the performers catching and throwing plates with their wrists and decided to apply that technique to their sport; at the time, players stiff-armed shots and passes. The next year, the Hungarian team toured Great Britain playing exhibition matches. “The Brits were Olympic champions,” says Csurka. “And Hungary beat them like hell.”

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Hungary won its first Olympic gold medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics; between 1928 and 1939, the nation won 110 straight international matches. After Nazi occupation of Hungary in the mid-1940s, Soviet forces drove out the Germans. Hungary became an Iron Curtain nation, and in the weeks before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, the Red Army brutally suppressed an uprising in the country. Some 2,500 Hungarians were killed. It was amid such geopolitical tension that Hungary, the defending gold medalists, and the Soviet Union played the most famous game in water polo history: a violent clash called the  “Blood in the Water” match, in which a Soviet player punched star Hungarian player Ervin Zádor in his head, and his blood poured into the pool. Many Hungarian émigrés hung Hungarian flags with the communist emblem cut out and shouted, "Hajrá Magyarok!" (Go Hungarians!) in the stands. "We felt that we were playing not only for ourselves, but for every Hungarian,” Zádor said afterward. “This game was the only way we could resist them." 

The ref called the match, which Hungary was leading 4-0, before the final whistle. Then Hungary beat Yugoslavia—without an injured Zádor—in the gold-medal game.

This legendary contest—also the subject of a 2006 documentary, Freedom’s Fury, which was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu among others—inspired future national-team players. And each victorious generation has motivated the next. The gold-medal three-peat between 2000 and 2008, which included many of the same core players, has had a profound influence. “Everyone loved that team,” says Vigvári. “They know all the players. Even if water polo is not a big sport worldwide, in Hungary, we had a team we could root for that was successful internationally. It’s a big thing, and a lot of kids start to play water polo because of that success.”

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The Hungarian government has also chipped in. Since 2011, companies have been permitted to write off donations for sports infrastructure, equipment, and youth-athlete training as tax deductions: water polo received some $270 million in investment during the first 10 years of the program. “In my experience, and I have traveled a lot because of water polo, we have the best pools in all of Europe,” says Vigvári.

A 10th Olympic gold for Hungary is no sure thing. Vigvári calls Spain the favorites: many Spanish players suit up for the same club team in Barcelona, giving them a chance to develop year-round chemistry. Italy’s got speed. But Hungary can hang with anyone. “We have amazing shooters who are very capable of scoring many, many goals and very great goals,” says Vigvári. “For Hungarian players, making big things happen comes naturally.”