Éva Székely

Éva Székely [ˈeːvɒ ˈseːkɛj], at times also Éva Gyarmati [ˈeːvɒ ˈɟɒrmɒti]; (* 3 April 1927 in Budapest; † 29 February 2020 ibid) was a Hungarian swimmer and Olympic champion.

Székely grew up as a Jew in Hungary, which was allied with the Third Reich. This led to her expulsion from her swimming club after Hungary entered the war in 1941, and later to a loss of training opportunities due to a general ban on Jews using public swimming pools, but also protected her from deportation until 1944, like all Hungarian Jews. She survived the German occupation of Budapest in 1944/45 in a Swiss safe house. Her experiences during this time are documented as one of eleven fates of Hungarian Jews during the 1940s in an anthology published in the 1990s.

After the liberation Székely started swimming again. She took part in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1948 and reached the final heat of the 200 m breaststroke in London, but missed the medal places with a fourth place; she also only reached fifth place with the 4×100 m freestyle relay.

At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki she then won the 200 m breaststroke competition with the then revolutionary and also permitted butterfly technique, with Olympic records in each of the semifinals and finals; also because of her victory a new definition of breaststroke was decided for the swimming competitions, which excluded the dolphin technique. Nevertheless, she was also able to win the silver medal in the breaststroke competition at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics using the classical technique. In 1957, after her then-husband Dezső Gyarmati, a world-class water polo player, was nearly beaten to death by the Hungarian secret police, she fled to the United States. However, she and her husband and daughter returned to Hungary just one year later, fearing for her parents.

During her active career she set a total of 10 world, five Olympic and 107 Hungarian records between 1940 and 1958, including the first officially recognised best in the 400 m medley. In addition to her Olympic medals, she was a ten-time World Student Champion and 67-time Hungarian Champion.

After her active career she worked as a trainer; the athletes she coached won numerous national and international titles as well as several Olympic medals.

Székely married Dezső Gyarmati, captain of the Hungarian winning team of the water polo tournament at the 1956 Olympic Games, but divorced; their daughter Andrea Gyarmati was also a world-class swimmer as well as a medalist at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

Székely was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1976 and the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981. She died at the end of February 2020 at the age of 92.