József Gurovits

József Gurovits worked as an electrician and became acquainted with kayaking at Elektromos, the company’s sports affiliation. He started competing in 1946 and in 1949 was selected to the national team. In 1950, he became one of the founders of the kayak division of Bp Honvéd. At the 1952 Olympics, he finished third in K2-10K alongside Ferenc Varga, winning the first Olympic medal for Hungarian kayaking. Two years later, Gurovits finished fourth (K4-10K) and sixth (K4-1,000) at the World Championships.

Sadly for Gurovits, his career came to an end when he met and fell in love with Mária Földváry-Boér, a Hungarian speed skating champion. Due to her family background, she was considered an enemy of the Communist system, which ended Gurovits’ elite sports career in 1955 and he began working as a journalist for a daily newspaper.

Then history intervened again. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the editorial office was surrounded by tanks and Gurovits just managed to escape and travel to the Austrian border with his wife and mother-in-law with a single backpack. From the refugee camp in Innsbruck, with the help of Swiss sports friends, they moved to Zürich and settled there.

Gurovits only did sports in Switzerland as a hobby but also founded a Hungarian Sports Club. In Switzerland Gurovits first studied machine engineering and then mastered computer engineering, working in that industry for 33 years.