Film belonging to 1948 skier Anikó Eleőd (next to tree) has recently been rediscovered by her family.
Borşa, the lost Olympic ski resort of the Carpathians
by Dr András Killyéni (Hungarian Olympic Academy)
1944 was an Olympic year but the Games themselves never took place. The cruel years of the Second World War were perhaps the darkest in world history. The conflict left millions dead and many more seriously. wounded. The lives of many families were destroyed and cities laid waste. It is impossible to quantify the suffering this period caused to mankind.
Yet even during this time, there were projects that looked to the future and peace, showing the solidarity of local communities. Among these, the story of an “Olympic Ski Center” planned in Borsafüred in Maramures, now the subject of a documentary film entitled “The Borşa Tourist Resort as it was dreamed.”
It includes extracts from a fascinating promotional film believed lost and only recently rediscovered. It came to light thanks to relatives of Hungarian alpine skier Anikó Eleőd, a competitor at the 1948 Games. They discovered a cache of some 9 mm films, including material shot at Borşa in 1943.
The area is part of the Rodna mountains, part of the North Eastern Carpathians, now part of Romania.
During the 20th century, this region was divided several times, and parts of it belonged at various times to Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and later, to Ukraine.
Following the Vienna Diktat of August 30th, 1940, the southern part of Maramures was annexed to Hungary.
During this period, Hungarian skiers were looking for places to create international slopes, eventually choosing the northern part of the Rodna Mountains, part of the North Eastern Carpathians, namely the Borşa Complex area. The beauty of the landscape, the splendid peaks, the perfect ski slopes and the ideal weather conditions fascinated fans of winter sports.
The Hungarian authorities had been inspired by the example of the 1936 Winter Olympics organised in Garmisch Partenkirchen. The dream was to construct a ski centre on the German model but the project enjoyed the support of the predominantly Romanian population.
The Borşa Complex soon turned into a meeting point. There were several reasons for this rapid evolution. The Hungarian government, the ski federation and the investors (most of these ideas turned into reality thanks to donations) never regretted the material investment they made. Among them, we find a number of enthusiastic supporters, from Hungarian aristocrats fond of skiing to the Romanian inhabitants of the region. Each of them contributed according to their own means: some “lent” a large part of their vast wealth (without wishing anything in exchange for their generosity), while others gave up some of the little land they had so that the local community would have something to gain from the profit of the investment.
The Romanians living in the mountain understood the implications of this project which would provide infrastructure, roads and railways, and other investments crucial to having ski slopes. As the whole local community had something to gain, support had never been a political issue or an ethnically motivated decision.
At the same time, it is important to mention that nobody waited for the war to finish or postponed the work in these difficult years. The fear of the outcome of the war and what might happen as a result did not prove an obstacle. Everyone believed in the success of the project because the Olympic idea has always survived wars.
It was believed that Budapest might table a bit for the Olympics of 1944 or 1948 and that
work began in 1941.The standard of the facilities planned was perhaps not surprising if we consider the purpose for which they were created. A bid to host the Winter Olympic Games at the resort would have eventually been forthcoming. Both the most beautiful slope and the hill were called “Olympia.”
Modern sports facilities included shorter and longer ski slopes, modern chalets and the largest ski jumping hill in Europe.
When the war came to an end, the region came under the Soviet sphere of influence. It was not part of the plan for the new Communist regime. Some of the installations were burned down and the site fell into disrepair. Only now has the site again become a centre of winter sports activity.
The documentary is the result of more than two years of work and draws on more than 200 books, magazines and other printed material. It also uses the film which has now been preserved in digital form.
When I talk about this topic, the most frequent question is: how would this centre have looked if it had been completed, so I decided to “rebuild it visually” with two colleagues, a 3D artist and a movie expert.
Although we have technological innovation at our fingertip, much sport history research is still done in an old fashioned way. So my idea was to bring technological innovation such as the power of 3D simulation, together with techniques from documentaries, and combine these with information from newspapers of that period.
What would the Borşa Complex have looked like, had it been fully completed? The video answers this question.
A companion book “Olympic Dreams in Rodnei Mountains” in Romanian and English is available ISBN 978-606-717-038-2.
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