hungarian gymnast New Year’s Eve Csollany, Olympic rings champion in Sidney’00, died this Monday at the age of 51 due to Covid-19, as reported by the sports authorities.
“It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Szilveszter Csollany,” the national gymnastics federation and the Olympic Committee said in a joint statement, calling him an “exceptional” athlete.
The former gymnast had contracted the coronavirus in November and in early December he was hospitalized in Budapest in serious condition and intubated a week ago.
He was European champion in 1998 and won a silver medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, before winning gold at Sydney 2000, both times on rings, his favorite apparatus. After his retirement in 2003, he became a coach and worked for a small club in Austria until he fell ill.
Szilveszter Csollany, who had shared several “anti-vaccine” posts on his Facebook page, did not want to be vaccinated against Covid. However, he ended up being forced to use Janssen’s monodose “because of his work with children,” the Blikk tabloid reported at the time. But he was late to get immunized, since that was shortly before he contracted Covid and he could not develop a sufficient level of antibodies, according to the aforementioned media.
The tributes came from Hungary: “Goodbye champion”, Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote in a message accompanied by a black and white photo, while Zoltan Magyar, two-time Olympic champion in gymnastics, lamented “a huge loss at such a young age “.
