On September 2, 2022, Balázs Németh was taken over by Budapest 2023 NZrt, the company responsible for organizing the IAAF World Championships in Budapest. CEO position, and there is no major downtime in the business.
– My day starts at 6:30 AM – Then I check my colleagues’ emails at 3 AM – Because we have someone working until then. Where is the end of the day? The next morning at one o’clock. The Canadian Federation just sent out a letter saying they are bringing their own inflatable snow baths and are committed to it. This was just one of many examples I had to deal with. And I just received an e-mail in which it was written that the 10 km marathon course was 9996m 79cm. A dutch guy dealing with this came here and weighed it. So, three meters and 21 centimeters are missing to make the circuit truly 10 kilometers long. Therefore, the float must be removed. You can laugh about this now, but really, even these little things can ruin a perfect World Cup standings.
Budapest 2023 NZrt. And its CEO noted that a billion people will watch us during the World Cup.
– also from places where they may not even know who we are, who have never heard of Hungary. Budapest is one of the cities that has proven its ability to host the third largest sporting event in the world. Tens of thousands of tourists come here. If we only look at sports or sports diplomacy, we can end up on a much higher shelf than we are now.
Blas Nemeth also spoke about what he fears most, and which should not appear in his nightmares:
“This is something wrong on the racetrack.” I still remember when, on July 5, 1994, in New York, during the round of 16 of the soccer match between Bulgaria and Mexico, one of the goals was broken, and the organizers put a completely new soccer goal on the field of the giants on the 20th. five minutes. The game stopped during that period. The TV reporter’s sentence still rings in my ears to this day: “It’s unbelievable that they even thought of that,” Laszlo Golias said at the time. My mind is constantly pondering whether we have a “fallback goal” and whether we are thinking of everything we need to make a plan B, C, D.
Origo interview here can be read.
Cover photo: The National Sports Center is lit up in patriotic colors (Source: Budapest 2023 NZrt.)
