“Witness the wonder” boasts the slogan for the nine-day extravaganza of striving and success at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. That encouragement could easily be applied to the dazzling array of memorabilia and historical detail at the Museum of World Athletics, tucked away on the third floor of the glitzy Etele Plaza mall on the Buda side of the Danube.
“The world’s greatest athletics collection: clothes; shoes, medals, trophies, equipment,” bellows the hyperbole at the entrance to the collection.
And with justification.
Legendary names abound inside. A singlet from a certain Jesse Owens – the black American who upstaged Adolf Hitler’s white supremacy spiel at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Less geopolitical but no less momentous, a signed photograph of Roger Bannister, the British medic who was the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes.
Latter-day phenomena are in evidence too. A bodysuit from the French Olympic pole vault champion Renaud Lavillenie as well as a singlet from Carl Lewis, the American nine-time Olympic champion and eight-time world champion in the sprints and long jump.
There is a flashy golden shoe which Michael Johnson wore at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the singlet from the American triple jumper Christian Taylor from the 2019 Doha world championships: “2 x Olympic + 4 x world champion” Taylor helpfully writes on it "lest we forget".
Or are simply unaware – which was the case for Viktoria Semgen who was visiting the exhibition with her seven-year-old twins Julia and Bendeguz.
Spectators
“We’re going to the championships on Saturday,” said the 36-year-old who lives with her husband, Toth, in Diosd, 23 kilometres to the south of Budapest.
“The championships are happening in our city and it’s important to show the children what is there and maybe it might interest them to take up some sports.”
The Hungarian contribution to Olympic and world championships legend also features in the exhibition, which runs until the end of the Budapest meeting on 27 August.
Names such as Ibolya Csák who became the first Hungarian to win a gold medal when she claimed the high jump at the same Games as Owens and Imre Nemeth who took gold in the hammer in London in 1948. Both feats that happened on foreign fields long, long ago.
Krisztian Pars, Balazs Baji and Antia Marton – inter alia – offer a modern slant on Magyar majesty at the world championships which will take place in the Hungarian capital for the first time in its 40 year history.
Change
Between 19 and 27 August, more than 2,000 athletes from 200 countries will battle for supremacy at the National Athletics Centre which has been built on a former brownfield site on the eastern bank of the Danube to the south of city centre.
It's a far cry from the inaugural Helsinki championships between 7 and 14 August in 1983 when 1,333 men and women from 153 nations competed.
Four years later in Rome, 1,419 athletes from 156 countries took part and in Tokyo in 1991, there were nearly 1,500 from 167 nations.
It has been biennial since Stuttgart in 1993.
“It’s good that Budapest is hosting it,” said Rebeka Nagy who had popped into the exhibition while passing through the mall after a yoga class.
“I’m not really that into sports,” added the 21-year-old politics student. “But my sister is and so I guess it will be on the TV at home while the championships are on.”
Mammoth audience
More than one billion people are expected to watch the action on an array of screens during the competition in which the American Noah Lyles will be attempting to claim a hat trick of titles in the 200 metres.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce – renowned for her innovative, multi-coloured hairstyles as well as her lightning pace – will try to harvest a record-extending sixth world championship title in the 100 metres.
The 36-year-old Jamaican has already contributed her singlet from the 100m triumph at Eugene in 2022 to join compatriots Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown with memorabilia in the museum.
"I’ve built a legacy that I hope inspires other women to believe in themselves and be relentless at pursuing their dreams,” she said when handing over the garment.
Another win next Monday night in the final might provoke another gift to the museum's collection. Singlets, shoes and signatures abound. So why not locks of hair? The strands would work well with all the tales of getting ahead.
