FROM RUTGERS TO REUTERS: TRACKMAN BALAZS KORANYI ANALYZES THE 19TH WORLDS

FROM RUTGERS TO REUTERS:
TRACKMAN BALAZS KORANYI
ANALYZE THE 19TH WORLDS

By ELLIOTT DENMAN

Remember Balazs Koranyi?

I sure do. Lots of track fans around New Jersey – and the rest of the world – remember him, too.

He traveled from Walter Johnson High School in Maryland to Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and then his real travels started – back to Hungary, the Koranyi family’s historic homeland, and the global track and field circuit.

He’s still in the books as the RU 800-meter record-holder and in the RU Hall of Fame for all his brilliant racing for Coach Mike Mulqueen’s Scarlet Knights.

But his finest racing deeds came for Team Hungary: Two Olympic appearances, reaching the 800 semis at Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000. A fourth at World Indoors and a third at European Indoors. PRs of 1:45.39 out and 1:46.47 in. National records in and out.

That was some two decades-plus ago – but he’s never stopped traveling. He’s now Thomson Reuters’ chief correspondent, focused on the economic, business, and political events of mostly Europe and the world. He’s putting his RU degree in political science to great work. As Linked In puts it, “in managing a team of reporters. In a changing media landscape, (he is) always striving for innovation while maintaining the gold standard in journalism.”:

So obviously, he’s well equipped to analyze the story behind the story of the recently concluded 19th World Championships of Track and Field.

Like almost all in Hungary, he’s delighted with the huge success of the Worlds – that terrific Nemzeti Atletikai Kozpont stadium, those great crowds for nine straight days, all those magnificent performances by the fastest-strongest-leaping representatives of 202 nations, all those TV hours and their grand vistas of Buda and Pest and the long journey the capital city has taken from a horrendous world war to years in the Soviet orbit to its modern-day status as a member of the European Union and NATO.

He was there in the early days of 19th Worlds – “I bought a ticket like everyone else,” he tells you. “And the quality of the performances was just fantastic. Top match-ups, fantastic results. Great competition.”

But there was a downside, too.

It came at a cost in major-major forints – the Hungarian currency – that will surely have many zeroes attached when all is toted…