Bela Karolyi
Bela Karolyi
Béla Károlyiis a Romanian gymnastics coach of Hungarian descent. He was born in Kolozsvár, Hungary...
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth13 September 1942
CountryRomania
appreciation gymnastics knows
I know gymnastics. It's always been a subjective appreciation.
athlete growth way
I still love to find and develop the young athletes in traditional ways. I like to watch the physical and mental growth. That has always been very exciting.
borders hungary romania
I am very familiar with Hungary, because I grew up in Romania, which borders it.
lucky living-my-life ups-and-downs
I consider myself very lucky that I could live my life through all the ups and downs.
competition progress
No competition, no progress.
gymnastics world laughed
The rest of the world laughed at American gymnastics before I came.
gymnastics community olympics
The Olympics shows the community what gymnastics is all about.
attitude my-attitude enough
My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.
building-up practice vaults
A good 80 percent of the vault is still physical and another percentage of it, 20, 25 percent is mental. Mental is always the mental strength, the confidence building up to that contest or repetition, practice, practice, and practice.
powerful struggle challenges
Back in Romania, always I was struggling to compete with Vladislav Rastorotsky, the great Russian coach of Lyudmila Turishcheva. He was a powerful coach, internationally. I took him like the major challenge of my life, and pretty soon I'm beating him and we are pushing each other so hard, so fierce. But out of the arena, we are friends.
play wings giving
The crowd sometimes plays a tremendous role to give you wings and carry you to victory.
athlete gymnastics people
You have to have competent people evaluating the athlete, not the housewives!
lying believe heart
I believe in playing with your heart, with every fiber in your body-fairly, squarely, by the rules-to win. And I believe that any man's finest moment, the greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out and lies exhausted on the floor of battle-victorious.
gymnastics sacrifice goal
Success depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice, how much you are willing to alter your everyday life for a particular goal.