Dr. Dunja Antunovic
Assistant Professor of Sport Sociology at the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, USA. Her research focuses on the mediated visibility of women’s sports and on cross-national comparisons of Olympic and Paralympic Games coverage.
Email: dunjaant@umn.edu
Dr. Tamás Dóczi
Associate professor at the Hungarian University of Sports Science, Budapest, Hungary. His research includes sport and globalization, the relationship of sport and identity, the role of sport in public diplomacy, and the media representation of athletes.
Email: doczi.tamas@tf.hu
LinkedIn: Tamas Doczi
On August 1st, well into the Games, Hungary still did not have a gold medal, leaving some to ask the question whether Hungarians should really be looking forward to medals, or just be happy with a place in the finals. Behind the question lies the contradiction that, while the difficulty of these feats is recognized, expectations towards Hungarian athletes remain high. Indeed, media narratives around sports associated with national success rearticulated the “small country, great accomplishments” imagination and placing tension between state sporting expectations and individual athletes’ agency.
In Hungary, sport is an institutionalized tool in nation-building and public diplomacy, and media organizations serve as an essential avenue. The government has a strong hand in the media landscape, and sport is no exception. Public service media have taken on the role to construct sport history, through introducing to a sport-focused channel, M4Sport in 2015, and a sport radio channel in 2024.
During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the social media platform M4Sport followed the routine coverage of events, driven by the performance times of Hungarian athletes. Swimmer Katinka Hosszú, who won three gold and one silver medals in Rio did not win a medal in Tokyo. The perceived failure in relation to national expectations generated dramatic coverage of a swimmer, whose life, marriage, and career was already a point of politicization that presented a tension around state-paternalism vis-a-vis capitalist models of sport.
In preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Hungarian media once again set high expectations for athletes. The Hungarian delegation sent 178 athletes, the 15th largest delegation overall. The Games concluded with 19 medals, ranking the country in 14th place on the medal table. The overall medal count aligned with the expectations voiced by the Hungarian Olympic Committee and the State Secretary for Sport, but did not meet the predictions of the state-owned daily sports newspaper Nemzeti Sport: 25 medals.
While the medal count is still be considered “business as usual,” the cases of some of the medal-winning athletes are worthy of consideration in the context of national identity, politics, and sports media. A recent study revealed that many Hungarian athletes perceived that journalists were superficial in their interviews and spread inaccuracies in articles.
Long before the Paris Games, conversations about medal expectations for swimmer Kristof Milák were discussed. However, the Swimming Federation and the Hungarian media had limited information about Milák’s preparation, and the president of the Federation claimed that Milák owes the country and should take training seriously. Milák refused to give any interviews before the Olympic competition, where he eventually finished 2nd in the 200m and then won gold in 100m butterfly. His silence continued after the competition, which triggered various negative and speculative reflections by sport journalists. Milák and the Hungarian media, while likely an extreme case, reflects a pattern of distrust between Olympic athletes and journalists who cover them.
Another worthy example pertains to Viviana Márton, 2024 Olympic gold medal winner in taekwondo, a sport without previous success and an athlete who had been mostly unknown. While the national federation did mention her as a potential medal winner, her eventual success came out of nowhere for the public. Viviana Márton was born to Hungarian parents living in the Canary Islands. Celebrating her win with her Finnish coach while displaying Hungary and Canary Island national flags left viewers focusing on national identity. The feeling was further complicated by the interview she gave, clearly with an accent in Hungarian. Even so, the process of making the athlete ‘our own’ started immediately.
Both the case of Milák and that of Márton illustrate how elite athletes, if they are successful and contribute to the “small country, great accomplishments” narrative, they become public property, and as such are treated by the media with care and scrutiny at once. Milák, having this status for longer, found himself struggling with the entire national sport system when he was hesitant to hunt further medals, yet, after his repeated glory, he was selected to be a flag bearer at the closing ceremony. On the other hand, Márton, coming from outside, offers limited legitimation for the sport leaders and the system in general, but the construction of the narrative of her Hungarianness began with full force following her success.
While these narratives around sporting performances reveal specifics to the Hungarian context, at the center of these narratives lie tensions between the role of journalists, the voices of athletes, and the responsibilities of governing bodies in setting national expectations. Considering the state support for (certain) sports, do stakeholders, such as federations, journalists, and audiences view athletes as public property? How do or how should journalists treat statements from federation officials pertaining to athlete accomplishments? These questions could also be useful for studies on hybrid sport and media systems in the wider region.
