Alex Tarics, 98, a Hungarian water polo player medalist, is to set to be the guest of honour at the London games as the oldest living Olympic Champion. Tarics had won a gold medal in 1936. He was 22 when he became one of the youngest men in the Hungarian team to beat Germany in the final.The medalist is also a civil engineer with a doctorate who moved to America in 1948 where he made a name for himself as an expert in quake-proof construction.To this day, he loves complicated arithmetic problems. Such puzzles have kept his brain fit, says Tarics, who is set to turn 99 in September.Tarics, who keeps fit at home in California, says he still remembers vividly the day 76 years ago in which he won the gold medal.”The Olympic Village looked like a military camp with swastikas and uniformed soldiers all over the place,” he recalls. “But in 36 politics never entered the locker-room, never! Politics and sports are like water and oil, it doesn’t mix.”Tarics has been invited by the Hungarian Olympic Committee to attend the Games in August as a guest of honour, along with his 80-year-old wife Elisabeth.Following the death last August of Italian cyclist Attilio Pavesi, who won the gold in Los Angeles 1932 and lived to be 100, Tarics got to enjoy a new place of honour.”I’m so happy that I was still alive!” he grins.
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