{"id":436195,"date":"2020-06-17T20:57:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T03:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=436195"},"modified":"2020-06-17T20:57:34","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T03:57:34","slug":"passages-gyorgy-karpati-three-time-olympic-water-polo-gold-medalist-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/passages-gyorgy-karpati-three-time-olympic-water-polo-gold-medalist-84\/","title":{"rendered":"Passages: Gyorgy Karpati, Three-Time Olympic Water Polo Gold Medalist, 84"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gyorgy Karpati,<\/strong> a four-time Olympic medalist and three-time gold medalist, died Wednesday at age 84.<\/p>\n

The death was announced by<\/a> the Association of Immortal Hungarian Athletes. No cause of death was listed.<\/p>\n

Karpati won gold medals for Hungary in 1952, 1956 and 1964. He also won a bronze medal at the 1960 Olympics and was on the coaching staff for the gold-winning team at the 1976 Games. He was elected to the<\/a> International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1982.<\/p>\n

The 1956 Games was particularly resonant for Hungary . The Hungarians beat the Soviet Union in the semifinal, the infamous \u201cBlood in the Water<\/a>\u201d game, in which Karpati scored. That game, a 4-0 Hungary win, occurred just weeks after an anti-Soviet movement within the country was violently quashed. Karpati told the Associated Press in 2002 that the semifinal was like, \u201cbattling the huge Soviet Goliath.”<\/p>\n

“We shared a feeling that if we could beat the Russians, it would be a kind of payback, a psychological victory for Hungary,” Karpati told the Chicago Tribune<\/em> in 2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n