Anna Kael

Anna Kael began her sports career in 1926 as a gymnast in of TFSE. In addition to gymnastics, she also achieved excellent results in athletics and basketball. In 1932, she was the first to win the Hungarian championship in women’s high and long jump. From then until 1944, she won a total of 12 championship titles in athletics and appeared in the Hungarian national team 5 times. In 1930 she set a national record in high jump, then in 1934 she btoke the Hungarian shot put record. As a member of the TFSE basketball team, she won the national championship 3 times (1933, 1939, 1942). She was a member of the national basketball team between 1928 and 1934.

She achieved her most significant success in gymnastics, however, where in 1928 she participated at the Amsterdam Olympics. The Hungarian women’s team led after the first day, but fell back to fourth on the second day. In November 1932, the board of directors of the Association of Hungarian Gymnastics Associations (MOTESZ) donated a large bronze medal to the members of the gymnastics team, with five ringed enamels and the engraved inscription “In memory and compensation - 1928”. In 1938, the World Gymnastics World Championship was held in Budapest, and Kael won a silver medal in the team and 4th place individually . In 1929 she graduated as a physical education teacher at the Royal Hungarian College of Physical Education. At the college she was first a lecturer between 1929-1932, between 1932-1941 she was a teaching assistant, assistant lecturer, deputy teacher, a regular teacher, and then between 1941-1950 she was a university professor. As an associate professor, she was the head of the department of the Faculty of Athletics from 1950 to 1952. She married Olympic long jumper Lajos Balogh and was the mother of javelin thrower Aniko Balogh and the grandmother of water polo players Attila and Zsolt Petőváry.