Bridge inauguration and topping-out ceremony at the new home of Hungarian athletics

The construction of the National Athletics Centre, the home of next year's World Athletics Championships, continued with the inauguration of the bridge linking the training centre to the stadium and the topping-out ceremony to mark the highest point of the facility.

Friday's ceremony, attended by Miklós Gyulai, President of the Hungarian Athletics Federation (MASZ), Márton Gyulai, member of the Executive Committee of the European Athletics Association (EA) and Zsolt Gyulay, President of the Hungarian Olympic Committee, among others, began with the "barrel-rolling" ceremony, which inaugurated the bridge that connects the training centre on the top of Csepel Island and the stadium.

Ádám Schmidt, State Secretary for Sport and Government Commissioner for the World Athletics Championships, said the stadium was a "stunning sight", built with the idea of representing "the crown of the queen of sports".

"This will be the world's first outdoor athletics arena, which will be a worthy home for Hungary's biggest sporting event so far", said Ádám Schmidt.

The sports leader said that, in addition to the construction of the stadium and its surroundings, there are also ongoing negotiations in the background to ensure that everything is ready for the start.

"We want Hungary to become a sporting nation, and to achieve this we need to promote lifelong sport even more," Schmidt said. He added that he was confident that the panoramic running track in Budapest, which is being built in the stadium, would play a motivating role in this.

"The aim was that the arena should not be an empty ornament but a lively venue and sports centre," said the State Secretary.

He said that ticket sales for next August's World Championships will start in November, and discussions are already under way on the name of the stadium. He said that they would like to find a worthy name for the facility designed by Marcel Ferencz.

Balázs Németh, CEO of Budapest 2023 Nonprofit Zrt., the company organising next year's World Athletics Championships, emphasised that a billion people will be watching next year to see whether the contractors have done their job well.

"We hope that coaches and athletes will come from more than 215 countries, many of them from countries where Hungarians have never been heard of before. This will be the biggest sporting event ever in Hungary, which I hope will not only be a sporting event, but an event like we have never seen before, which everyone will have to participate in and experience," said Balázs Németh.

Looking ahead to the upcoming event next summer, the CEO said that in 295 days, there will be more than 30,000 people cheering in the stands throughout nine days, and "if all goes well", they will be able to get many more than 30,000 people to move more and live more sporty lives.

"We would like the facility to be home to both professionals and amateurs, where the superheroes fighting for world records could be joined by everyday heroes," underlined Balázs Németh.

Miklós Gyulai, president of the Hungarian Athletics Federation, told the Hungarian news agency MTI: he has visited many stadiums, but the Budapest one is the most beautiful. Their task in the federation is to put together a decent Hungarian national team for the World Championships, and they are working hard on this.

"The preparations have started and although I don't like to praise ourselves, Hungarian athletics had one of its most successful years in 2022. The goal is to be even more successful next year. We are going through a difficult period, but this event is an incredible motivation for everyone," said Miklós Gyulai.

Asked about expectations, the sports chief pointed out that he never thought in terms of results, he is satisfied when the athlete is satisfied with himself or herself.

"We are aware of the strengths, we are not an athletics nation, but we have athletes who can achieve anything. Keeping that in focus, we try to create the opportunity for undisturbed preparation. Competitors who know what they want to achieve will certainly make the audience happy," said Márton Gyulai.

At the end of the ceremony, a wreath with the flags of the builders, contractors and investors was raised on the stadium's tensioned cable support structure.

MTI