Mourning: Olympic champion Diána Igaly had passed away

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2021.04.10. 22:53

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Diána Igaly, who won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, had passed away at the age of 56. The news was confirmed to Nemzeti Sport by György Nagy, president of the Hungarian Shooting Federation.

Diána Igaly is one of the greatest figures of Hungarian sports shooting. She won a gold medal at the Junior European Championships, her first international appearance in women's skeet in 1983. She then went on to achieve great results: along with many podium finishes, she celebrated two individual and team world titles, while winning six gold medals at the European Championships.

Women's skeet debuted at the Olympics in Sydney at the turn of the millennium, and Igaly immediately won a bronze medal. She crowned her career at Athens 2004 where she was able to stand on top of the podium.

How she won the Olympic gold in 2004

The great skeet team!
Diána Igaly, Erzsébet Vasvári and Ibolya Göbölös. The great skeet team! During their joint career, they won two world championship golds, one silver and three bronze medals, and at the European Championships they won one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. Understandably, the teammates were heartbroken while giving us interviews believing that Diána Igaly would be out of the hospital. "I cannot accept what has happened," says Erzsébet Vasvári, who had coached Diána Igaly for 10 years and worked together on a youth program three years ago. “I don't get it because she was characterized by the words strength, perseverance, and victory. Besides these, Dia was an infinitely good, kind person, whom I now have so many memories of. It's a memory because unfortunately, we can't have our daily conversations anymore. Along with the pain, I know one thing for sure: we will definitely find a way to preserve her memory and this unparalleled career for future generations." "I remember when she was a little girl. She came to the shooting range with her parents. She was seven or eight years old only, she was playing Lorum with the adult shooters because when her parents went to shoot, she replaced them. ‘Mom, give me two forints' was her slogan, and like in card games, she was a fast learner in sports, too, and became a very successful person. We've been through a lot together – joy, failure, struggle, and I believed that the power that was living inside her would overcome the disease. I was waiting for the phone call from her that ‘I'm home, everything is fine,' but last night I got a very different call... I couldn't cry at the time, now I'm bursting out crying because I have to say goodbye to a very good person, a real friend, a teammate," Ibolya Göbölös told our portal.

In an interview with MTI in 2015 to mark her 50th birthday, Igaly broke down her professional career into three stages. She revealed that in 1997, when the first stage ended with her father's, the former great competitor's death, she also thought about retiring. However, it was her father's words that convinced her to continue.

"My father died knowing that participating at the Olympics was available to me. He didn't tell me, but my mother that I would be there. When my mother told me all this after his death, that's when I decided to keep going, and even though I was successful then, I won a world championship and a quota the following year," Igaly said at the time, adding that she had been able to win major competitions every year until the Olympic success in Athens, and that was at the top.

Despite struggling with shooting range problems for years, she was able to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and finished 13th there, and attempted to qualify for the London Olympics, but failed to do so.

We reported on Tuesday that she had been hospitalized for a disease caused by the coronavirus. Her death news was confirmed to Nemzeti Sport by György Nagy, president of the Hungarian Shooting Federation.

"Diána will always remind me of the wonderful memories she gave sports-loving Hungarian people at the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I am in the fortunate position of seeing both of her great successes on the spot which are unforgettable experiences. Skeet was her labor of love – she was devoted to it both as the Federation's vice president and as the representative of her own club. The outstanding figure of Hungarian sports shooting, who was able to fight for her goals with blocking everything else out, was a great warrior, I am terribly sorry that she lost this last fight. My sincere condolences to the family," György Nagy told Nemzeti Sport.

Diána Igaly had been on the podium 32 times in world competitions. She was sports shooter of the year five times and received a lifetime achievement award from the Hungarian Shooting Federation in 2019.

WHAT OTHERS SAID ABOUT HER
József Sike, 3x individual World champion in running target shooting: “It's hard to put into words what I'm or we're in the sport feeling right now. I bid farewell in my heart to a person who worked tremendously for her achievements, who had exemplary discipline, who loved her father infinitely and never forgot what he had given her. It's incomprehensible what happened to her who had lived healthily. Goodbye, Dia!"
Zoltán Papanitz, 2x World champion pistol shooter: "Dia was a fantastic competitor which made me look up to her. She had self-realization and creative will that affected everything. The world admired her dynamics. What she wanted and decided to do mostly happened in the competitions. She was full of will to act, not just in sports, but in life, too. Besides, she was an infinitely gentle creature who never said and couldn't say anything bad about anyone. It's tough for all of us now. It's very hard to deal with the fact that she's gone.”
Károly Gombos,European champion, skeet shooter, career partner, former national team head coach: "What comes to my mind about Diana? That we've been laughing all over the world. She was always a happy, cheerful, kind person, and in sport she's the optimal competitor who could concentrate, fight, and do everything to win. She already ran her 10 kilometers at 6:00 a.m., worked out, did gymnastics, so she could be better. In recent times, we'd been working together on the skeet program, which has been a little jammed over the years. On March 13th, I texted her and said, ‘Honey, what's up, what should we do?' She usually wrote the answer immediately, which I now know will never arrive."
Dániel Gyurta, Olympic champion swimmer and Hungarian Olympic Committee member: "After my silver medal at my first-ever Olympics in Athens, many people from the Hungarian athletes' team patted me on my shoulders, and Dia was one of them. I met a very helpful, genial athlete whose experience in sports and life I was touched by. I still lovingly think about our short but meaningful conversations in the Olympic Village. It was shocking and sad to wake up to the news that she is no longer with us... There are champions among champions, too, and Diána Igaly was one of them. Her death is a huge loss for the entire Olympic family. She is one of those athletes whose demeanor and work have been an example to me throughout my career. Even after her greatest victory, she was able to preserve the greatest virtue of athletes, discipline, and lived her life in the spirit of fair play."

ABOUT
Born:January 31, 1965; Budapest
Died:April 8, 2021; Budapest
Sport:Shooting (skeet, double trap)
Clubs:MHSZ KLK, BPLE, Igaly József LKSE
Achievements:Olympic champion (2004, skeet), Olympic 3^rd place (2000, skeet), Olympic 13th (2008, skeet), Olympic 42^nd (1992, skeet, open competition), 4x World champion (1998, 2002, skeet, individual; 1990, 1994, skeet, team), 2x World championships runner-up, 5x World Championships 3^rd, 5x European champion (1991, skeet, individual; 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, skeet, team), 4x European Championships runner-up, 3x European Championships 3^rd, Junior European champion (1983, skeet, individual), Junior Europeans runner-up, 22x Hungarian champion (skeet, double trap)