The Hungarian won the first gold in swimming in Athens 1896, after starting with football and athletics. Then he began to study and designed the stadium for the 1924 Paris Games
This story has two names, to call the memory of two lives. There is something far-fetched about it, like all memorable events that have actually happened; it has the same strength as water, which can kill as well as quench the thirst of the dying and, as it flows, reflects the gold of conquests. In Budapest, the winter that gathers on the banks of the Danube condenses the breath to the point that it merges with the fog. When it comes to a sigh, however, it makes sure to hide inside its blanket of milk. Arnold Guttmann, after his father had drowned there, watched the great river flow beneath him. How could that water appear to him? Perhaps, on full moon nights, like a snake with silver scales, which at any moment can envelop anyone in its coils. Was it to no longer fear that water that the boy changed his name? Even if it weren’t true, the continuation of the story, or rather the stories that coexist in his life, would make it plausible.