Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

no longer in existence. Horse-riding as a sport grew out of military service. Bemoaning the poor condition of the nation’s stock of horses, Széchenyi drew up the idea of quality horse-breeding and horse-racing in his early work Louakrul (Of Horses). Built on Széchenyi’s initiative, the country’s first racecourse (between the outer Üllői út and Soroksári út on the eastern fringe of the area, which is today occupied by the Ferencváros shunting yard) was the venue of the first races held on 6 June 1827, attended by large crowds who were seated on wooden terraces. Another military tradition is the survival of fencing as a modern sport. In 1825, on French initiative, the Pest National Fencing Hall, the first modern sports facility of the twin city’s population, was opened in the Hotel King of Hungary.

It was István Széchenyi himself who established, for the country’s nobility, the Fencing School of Young Hungarian Noblemen in 1829. In 1834 it was also Széchenyi who had the first Danube boat-house installed, which was later used by the Boating Association, a club established by Széchenyi himself.

The Danube also came to be the home of swimmers from Pest and Buda. Swimmers’ ‘baths’ consistThe Fourth Horse-Race in Pest - on the Széchenyi- RACECOURSE (LITHOGRAPH BY JÁNOS SCHMID)

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