Daniel Magay
Dan Magay is a Hungarian-born Olympic Gold medal winning sabre fencer. An individual finalist at the 1954 World Championships, he was selected for the Hungarian team 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
During the Olympics, Magay, along with many other Hungarian athletes, decided not to return to Hungary as the Soviets had cracked down after the failed Hungarian revolution. Magay came to the San Francisco Bay Area and studied at UC Berkeley. He won the US National Individual Sabre title three times, was twice US Team champion with the Pannonia Athletic Club and represented the US at the 1963 World Championships. He retired from fencing in 1966 and took up skiing.
Articles
1958 Pacific Coast Championships: Men’s Sabre Finals
As we here at The Archive continue to mine the amazing things found in the trove acquired from Heizaburo Okawa, I find myself drawn to the filmed elements we had transferred to digital.
George Piller comes to San Francisco
Gyorgy Jekelfalussy Piller has gone down in history as one of the most successful competitors and coaches. If his name is unfamiliar, let me give you a brief run-down. He competed for Hungary in the 1928 Olympics on the Foil Team and reached the semi-finals,...
Daniel Magay, Part 1
Daniel Magay was a member of the Olympic Gold medal winning Hungarian sabre team at the 1956 Melbourne games. Along with many other Hungarian athletes who wished to escape re-occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Union, which happened while the Olympics were underway, he chose to come to the United States on a plane chartered by Sports Illustrated magazine.
The Fairmont Exhibition, 1958
The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco is perched at the top of swanky Nob Hill. One of the premiere hotels in the city, it opened in 1907 after an extensive refurbishing of the damage done by the 1906 earthquake to the about-to-open Beaux-Arts building. Famed...
Tomas Orley
Tomas Orley was one of the leaders of the student protests that sparked the Hungarian revolution of 1956 that eventually saw Soviet tanks storm into the country and forcibly return the control of the country to communist hands.
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