Hungary’s State Secretariat for Sport has revealed financial cutbacks to the tune of HUF 5.7 billion (nearly $20 million USD), with the nation’s high priority Olympic sports being impacted. Swimming is among those sports that will see its funding shrink.
“Sports, like all sectors of the economy, have taken their share of epidemiological measures. In view of the emergency situation, taking into account some of the remaining tasks (especially organizing foreign training camps, rescheduling international competitions, etc.), we provided a 20% reduction in funding to finance the 2020 sports development tasks for high priority sports compared to the originally determined support.
“High profile sports were notified of the reduction on April 20, 2020. The sources available for achieving the 2020 sports facility development ideas for the priority sports have been reduced by almost half,” the state secretariat wrote. (Hungary Today)
According to 24.hu’s estimates, swimming will receive HUF 1.062 billion instead of HUF 1.328 billion, kayak-canoe funding will be reduced from HUF 920 million to 728 million, wrestling from 775 million to 620 million, and athletics will receive 608 million instead of HUF 760 million.
The nation of Hungary finished 3rd in the overall swimming medal table at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil. The 3 golds came from Katinka Hosszu who topped the podium in the 100m back, 200m IM and 400m IM.
HUF 5.7 billion is closer to $20 million USD than to $2 million.