Annamária Kovács-Tóth

Annamária Kovács first started to compete in athletics in 1959, initially as a sprinter and hurdler, before she became a pentathlon athlete. As an athlete of the Budapesti Honvéd, she won the Hungarian championship titles in 100 and 200 meter sprint, the 80 meter hurdles, and the long jump, and as a member of the 4x100m relay. The combined event, the pentathlon, was always closest to her heart, in which she proved herself five times between 1964 and 1969 to be the best in the country.

From 1963 she was a member of the national team 19 times. At the 1965 Budapest Universiade she won a silver medal in the pentathlon, and finished third in the 4 x 100 metres relay. At the European Championships in Budapest in 1966, she finished fifth in the pentathlon, and fourth as a member of the Hungarian 4 x 100m relay team. In 1967 she tied for the world leaderboard with 4,953 points.

In Hungary in 1967 she was chosen as the athlete of the year and the female athlete of the year. The following year she achieved her greatest success at the Mexico City Olympics when she won the bronze medal in pentathlon with a personal best of 4,959 points. In her last international meeting at the 1969 European Championships in Athens she finished tenth.

She retired from active sports in 1974. After that she completed her teaching degree at the College of Physical Education in Budapest. At the end of the seventies, she left the country and settled in the Federal Republic of Germany, where she worked as a coach and then as a nurse.

Personal Bests: 100 – 11.5 (1967); Pen – 4959 (1968).