Relay Team Wins World Championships Medal with Huge National Record

Attila Molnár, Zoltán Wahl, Patrik Enyingi, and Árpád Kovács (L-R)

The Hungarian relay team won the bronze medal in the men’s 4×400 meters on Sunday at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China.

The team of Patrik Enyingi, Zoltán Wahl, Árpád Kovács, and Attila Molnár missed the European Championships by a few hundredths, but the World Championships offered an excellent opportunity as “consolation,” especially as only five relay teams, including Sri Lanka and the host China, had entered, and overtaking them should not have been a problem for the Hungarians.

The US team was the clear favorite of the field with the first three finishers in the individual event (Christopher Bailey, Brian Fausto, and Jacory Patterson). The starter of the Hungarian quartet, Patrik Enyingi, semi-finalist at the European Championships and in Nanjing, began behind Jamaica on court four.

The athlete was already in third place at the end of the first lap. Although a bad changeover at the end of Wahl’s run dropped the team back to fourth behind the Chinese, Kovács ran well and was in overtaking position at the end of his first lap. However, the Chinese rival held on hard, their place did not change until the third changeover when the gap between the leaders and the last two racers became huge in favor of the Hungarian team.

In the last lap, Attila Molnár completed his 400m in 44.72 seconds, the fastest of the field, and the Hungarian relay team finished the eight laps in 3:06.03 minutes, setting a new national record, beating the previous record set in 2023 (3:08.58 minutes) by two and a half seconds.

“I tried to start strong, but the American and the Jamaican had a strong start. Then I wanted to overtake on the second lap, but it was a chaotic run (…). In the last stretch, I got next to the Jamaican, but Zoltán and I missed the changeover a little bit, (…) because the baton was slippery,” Enyingi assessed.

Zoltán Wahl went on to say that for days he had been talking to his teammates that it would be important to keep the position and keep traction, and that was what he was aiming for. Árpád Kovács said he had a clear goal to overtake the Chinese. “It would have been a huge help if I could have passed the baton as third placed, but luckily Attila managed it.”

Molnár, the Hungarian relay’s finalist, noted: “I took a big breath and I was like, ‘I have to come in third or I am going to die.'” He stressed that

they were aware that the field was not complete at the World Championships, but they fought for the medal and finished with a national record.

The gold medal went to the US relay team in a superior 3:03.13, with Jamaica second in 3:05.05.

The Hungarian team won the sixth medal in the history of Hungarian athletics and the first since 2018.

The medal table of the World Championships was won by the Americans with six gold, four silver and six bronze medals, while Hungary finished 27th.

Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Czeglédi Zsolt