Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said: "Hungary has to keep up with the world's best not only on the track and in the water, but also in preparation and the quality of the sports facilities."
"Hungarians have a special relationship with aquatic sports," PM Orbán said at the opening of the Kovács Katalin National Kayak-Canoe Academy in Sukoro, in central Hungary, on Saturday. Even though Hungary is a landlocked country, water polo, swimming and kayaking have always been the flagships of Hungarian elite sports, he said.
The prime minister praised Katalin Kovács, 31-time world champion canoe sprinter, who competed in four Olympic games and won three gold and five silver medals. He said her example showed that community and personal ambition were the two main drivers of success.
PM Orbán said athletes knew that community gave them strength and endurance. Values such as trust, perseverance and camaraderie can be best learned from sports, he added.
He said the other prerequisite for a nation's success was ambition, that we should not be satisfied with what was just good enough. These are skills that Hungary will greatly need in the period ahead, he said.
The past 35 years were a fundamentally peaceful era when it was possible to achieve success with simple life strategies and slightly better than average performance, but in the future, more will be required, the prime minister said.
Hungary will need people who can always "raise the bar," PM Orbán said. This is why the Hungarian government invests in sports and creates sports academies such as the Kovács Katalin National Kayak-Canoe Academy, Orban said.