Water polo's most brutal showdown

Gyorgi karpati was a key player in the hungarian water polo team which dominated the sport in the 1950s

The rivalry between the hungarians and their political overlords was intense at the best of times, but events in budapest during the 1956 games added a whole new dimension to what became known as the in the water match.

Of the directives to all the communist countries came from moscow the idea was to prove that sport was better under communism than in the west, he said.

The 1952 olympics in helsinki the coaches of water polo and fencing, two sports hungary was particularly good at, had to go to moscow and teach the soviet coaches how to do it like us.Karpati and his team mates were in a training camp preparing for the 1956 melbourne games, a popular uprising took place in budapest, and the team departed for australia via prague believing that they were leaving a free country.

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