Pál Szekeres, the only one to win Paralympic and Olympic medals keeps leading the way

Pál Szekeres insists he is not a hero, but his career in and out of sport suggests otherwise.

Reading an overview of the Hungarian’s achievements makes the jaw drop even lower. Olympic fencing bronze medal winner at 23, Paralympic champion four years later, double Paralympic champion in Atlanta in 1996, deputy secretary of state before his 40th birthday, executive board member of World Ability Sport, long-term president of the International Wheelchair Fencing Committee. And the list does go on.

But like all great tales, it is the beginning that is both alluring and telling.

“When I was young, a long time ago, on TV there were a lot of films of the middle ages, like Ivanhoe, like Zorro, and they all fought with a sabre or a foil so it was a very romantic period for a young boy,” Szekeres recalled with a big smile. “I saw that heroes were good and they always won and they had the best girl in the city.”

This desire to not only stand out but to also do something truly meaningful has driven Szekeres ever since. Now, on the verge of his 60th birthday – a milestone he plans to mark in 2024 by completing a marathon – the man from Budapest reflects that his sporting life had four distinct periods before an encore that he never expected.

Fighting his way to the very top

Fueled by those fictional heroes he found fencing at age 12. Small, but a fighter from the first breath, dedication was never an issue. However, after failing to be selected for a junior world championships team he had his eye on, his father sat him down for what would be a life-changing chat.

“He told me, ‘You have to press down the pedal to the maximum (to be successful). So, I give you two choices; one is don’t talk about the past, what you have lost, you have to train much harder and you have to be much stronger on the piste, or I buy you a car and a windsurf but then no more talking about fencing’.

“I think many guys would choose plan B, but I chose plan A.”, added Szekeres.

A year later the athlete was selected for the 1984 senior men’s team, but another strike: There was no trip to the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games, due to Hungary’s boycott. Nevertheless, four years later, he was in Seoul.

A narrow defeat to the mighty Soviet Union led to bronze in the men’s team foil. By 1989 he was, for four months, ranked as the world’s No.1 men’s foil fencer and a longed-for gold in Barcelona in 1992 was firmly on his, and his team’s radar.

But then everything changed.

From rehab to becoming champion

The second period of Szekeres’ sporting life started with him waking up on a field in Germany after the bus he was in was involved in a horrifying accident. “I touched my legs and I didn’t feel anything,” he recalled.

The following weeks and months were as bleak as anything Szekeres could imagine.

“I was thinking about killing myself. I had the feeling my life ended,” the fencer said. “I told my teammates my life was over because my spine was broken.”

However, in the fast-forward style observers must have grown used to, Szekeres swiftly transformed his mental outlook. Encouraged by the hospital staff he soon saw the wheelchair “not as an enemy but as a friend” and, even better, he learned he could still fence. It was a revelation.

“I actually won my first title during rehabilitation,” he said. “So, I arrived back to Hungary not as a disabled guy but as a European champion of wheelchair fencing.”

Injured in April 1991, European Wheelchair champion in November and back in Hungary in December. It may not have been for the Olympic Games but Szekeres was still headed to Barcelona the following summer. And by the end of it, he had done something that still no human being in history has ever achieved: winning medals in the Olympics and the Paralympics as an athlete.

“When I won the tournament and became Paralympic champion all the bad feelings went away. The dream was realised. I could see the continuity of my fencing career. I had new goals, new targets,” the Hungarian foil gold medallist said. 

Transforming the nation

Sporting-wise, the third and fourth periods of Szekeres’ career were an unrivalled success. He won everything, including two more Paralympic gold medals (men’s foil and sabre at Atlanta 1996) plus three successive Paralympic bronzes, 2000-2012.

But it was upon realising the country he had returned to in 1992 was not yet built for people like him that sowed the seed for an entirely new, and unexpected journey.

“When I arrived back from rehabilitation, I realised Hungary was not accessible,” Szekeres said. “The fencing hall was not accessible, the cinema was not accessible, the shops, the discotheques and the bars were not accessible – only the pharmacy and the hospital.

“It made me a serial fighter for those things.”

Remarkably, Szekeres became deputy secretary of state in the Ministry of Youth and Sport and so started a never-ending campaign to alter the lives of many other people in his country.  

The journey is not over, but the progress is impressive. Close to 100% of public buildings in Hungary are now accessible and the employment rate for those with impairment has risen from around 8% when Szekeres started to 52% now. Add on the impact he has made on wheelchair fencing – “we have five-times more countries involved now than in 1991” – and you can see why he gets asked for photographs wherever he goes in Hungary.

A reluctant hero he might be, but a hero nonetheless.

“To be an icon is always difficult and to talk about it. I just really hope I give hope and possibilities for some people who were (stuck) at home.”