Five Comrades

As Communist heroes go these days, a slim, hatchet-faced Hungarian army lieutenant named Sandor Iharos is a singular exception. For one thing, he is not a Communist Party member. All he knows about Marxism, he says, he learned by rote in school. And as a soldier he fights strictly from a desk. All Sandor really has to do is run, and he does that so well that he now holds five world records (from 1,500 to 5,000 meters). In sports-happy Hungary, excitement boils any time he shucks his sweat pants and gets to work, for Sandor is the star of a small, gaunt band of five trackmen* whom Hungarians confidently expect to win them third place in the 1956 Olympic Games at Melbourne, Australia.

Many experts outside Hungary concede that Sandor & Co., given a little help from some less talented trackmen, will not disappoint their countrymen: Hungary may be a small onion in the international goulash of sport, but it is a country with a determination to win. Explains ex-Sprinter Jozsef Sir (pronounced sheer), commissar of the track and field section of the sports council of the Ministry of Culture: "We train. That is our secret."

Come April showers, August heat waves, fall fogs or winter blizzards, the trackmen pull on spikes and practice every day of the year, and always amid a gaggle of trainers. High-speed sprints, then intervals of jogging, then high-speed sprints, hour after hour, mile after mile, make up their "interval training" program, give them the steel-legged, leather-lunged stamina of champions.

The rare moments of freedom from the strict regimen come, strangely, at the table. Breakfast--eaten usually in state-subsidized clubs or officers' messes--is a souped-up repast of coffee, rolls and hefty portions of eggs and ham. Lunch provides plenty of soup, meat and vegetables, topped off with the sweet desserts, e.g., palaczinta, so popular in Hungary. Suppers are generally light, but no one frowns on wines or beer. "We don't like our athletes to be ascetic," says Sir. "It doesn't go with the Hungarian character."

"It is possible," Runner Iharos once said in a rare reach for the party line, "that ideology also helps in a psychological way, but the real answer is in training." There is, he was frank to admit, one other advantage that the hard-running Hungarians can boast over their capitalist competitors: no senseless squabbles over the difference between amateur and pro. Said he: "We have no professionals here. There are only amateurs. All athletes are workers."

*The others: Second Lieut. Laszlo Tabori, 24, who shares the 1,500-meter record with Iharos; Captain Istvan Rozavolgyi, 26, 2,000-meter record holder; Textile Factory Worker Jozsef Kovacs, 29, who has tied the world record at 10,000 meters; Budapest Fireman Lajos Szentgali, 23, 800-meter specialist.

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