The classic from Szombathely won the silver medal at the Paris Olympics on Sunday with 79.97 meters.

Halász came to the French capital as a medal hopeful of the 18-member Hungarian athletics team and confidently secured his place in the final of 12 with a 76.90 meters from the qualifier.

The two-time World Championship bronze medalist was one of the five throwers in Sunday's final who already went above 80 meters this year.

won the silver medal at the European Championships in Rome with 80.49 meters. In addition to him, Polish Wojciech Nowicki (80.95), bronze medalist in Rio and gold medalist in Tokyo, European champion, Euro-3. based on this, Ukrainian Mihajlo Kohan (80.76) and five-time world champion Pawel Fajdek (80.02) were considered medal contenders, while the towering favorite was Budapest world champion Ethan Katzberg. The Canadian hammer thrower already threw 84.38 meters this year, which was bettered by only eight people in the world.

Katzberg immediately made it clear with the first throw that he came for the gold medal: with 84.12 meters, he practically already won the event.

The athlete from Szombathely, who celebrated his 27th birthday on Sunday, started with 77.58 meters, which placed him in fifth place after the first series, then improved in the second and advanced to fourth with 78.84. In addition to Katzberg, Kohan (79.39) and Norwegian Elvind Henriksen (79.18), the silver medalist in Tokyo, were ahead of him. They both dropped to third place, but Halász hit the 80th line (79.97 m), advancing to the silver medal position.

From the fourth series, only the best eight could continue, in reverse order. The Hungarian competitor almost repeated his previous throw, sending the hammer on its way with a big shout, which landed again at the 80th strip (79.94). Before that, his rivals couldn't improve and it seemed more and more that they couldn't be dangerous to him.

The order did not change in the fifth series either, Halász scored 77.66.

The final round followed, in which Nowicki had to finish seventh, and Fajdek finished fifth, and after Henriksen's invalid throw in the fourth, Halász's medal became certain, and after that, Kohan was unable to improve either. All of this meant that the Dobó SE athlete could enter the throwing circle at least as a silver medalist in his last attempt, saying goodbye with 79.82, and then punching the air in joy.

Halász said it was a “built-up race” and he was proud to be able to produce so many good throws.

"I said two days ago that this is a completely different throwing circle than what we are used to. That's why we had to build up this competition from the warm-up, I think I was able to present a very stable Olympic final, although the coveted 80 meters and my coach's peak were not achieved but at the Olympics it's still the ranking that matters," he said.

"I hope that everyone is proud of me at home, because it was a man's work, we fought an extremely close final. If Katzberg's first throw is excluded, everyone could see from the results that this was not the kind of competition that could lead to a world-famous result, but everyone fought hard. For me, the silver medal trumps everything," he said, adding:

before his last throw, a large stone fell from his heart, "I think it hit so hard that you could hear it, even though there are about 80,000 people here."

It has happened before that in the last series I slipped back in the front position, now it has reversed, this is also a reflection of the amount of work we have done, he emphasized.

Bence Halász said he was preparing for an 82-meter throw:

"For me, the whole competition was like when you can't think of a word, but it's on the tip of your tongue. I felt that if I could change the technique a little while throwing, I would be able to reach 82 meters".

Bence Halász won the tenth Olympic medal in the Hungarian hammer throw, the last time Krisztián Pars was able to stand on the podium, who triumphed in London in 2012.

Before Halász, the Hungarian athlete was able to stand on the five-ring podium last time in Rio. Eight years ago, Anita Márton won a bronze medal in the women's shot put.

MTI