In his address delivered before athletes, coaches and sports executives gathered together in the Cupola Hall, the Prime Minister highlighted that with their victories Olympic and Paralympic athletes set a good example for everyone in perseverance and fighting skills which we are very much in need of because also today Hungary is facing testing challenges.
He stressed that our athletes make us all proud, they demonstrate how good it is to be Hungarian.
Mr Orbán said with the word ‘bajnok’ (champion in Hungarian), the Hungarian language hit the nail on the head because originally this word means fighter, and was used to describe valiant soldiers who bravely engaged in combat and was reserved for victorious fighters.
He took the view that victory, an outstanding performance requires no explanation, there are moments which speak for themselves. Champions deserve special respect, also today they embody the nation’s most outstanding characteristics, he said.
He observed that we Hungarians love the Olympic games and sports as they are, when women enter women’s disciplines and men enter men’s disciplines, and it is not right if the attention and respect warranted by excellence are replaced with something else.
The Prime Minister said the greatest value of sport is that it is able to bring the best out of people, and it is the mission of athletes to be the best, and with this they can inspire us, too, so that we are not overcome by “the temptation of convenient mediocrity”.
We appreciate our athletes especially because we are a country that was deprived of the majority of its natural resources, and so everything we have is the result of individual performance and hard work, he said.
He also highlighted that the ideal of the Olympic games and patriotism stem from the same roots because without nations there are no Olympic Games. At the Olympic Games, the flag of the winner nation is hoisted the highest, and its national anthem is played.
