Vaccinated too late: Vaccination-skeptical Olympic champion died of Covid-19

Created: 2022-01-25Updated: 2022-01-25, 8:16 p.m

By: Max Schaefer

Szilveszter Csollany at a competition in 2002. 20 years later he dies as a result of a corona infection.

(Archive photo) © Schreyer/Imago

Szilvester Csollany attracted attention on social media with critical statements about corona vaccinations.

Now the Hungarian Olympic gymnastics champion has died as a result of the illness.

Budapest – The Hungarian gymnastics Olympic champion Szilvester Csollany died as a result of a corona infection *.

According to the authorities, the 51-year-old athlete died in a Budapest hospital on Monday (January 24, 2022).

Csollany was infected with the corona virus in November 2021.

Szilvester Csollany's condition deteriorated in early December 2021, forcing the former Hungarian gymnast to be hospitalized in Budapest.

There he was taken to the intensive care unit and connected to an artificial lung.

After statements skeptical about vaccination: Hungarian Olympic champion dies as a result of a corona infection

In the summer of 2021, Csollany drew attention to himself with vaccine-skeptical statements on social media.

The post on his Facebook page has since been deleted.

However, according to doctors close to him, the former gymnast had finally been vaccinated with the Corona vaccine * from Johnson & Johnson *.

Otherwise, according to the Hungarian newspaper Blikk, he would not have been able to work as a coach.

However, the time of the vaccination is said to have been shortly before he was infected with the corona virus, so that the vaccination was not yet able to develop its full effect.

Hungary's Olympic Committee reacted with "deep sadness" to the death of the former Olympic champion.

"Farewell, Champion," Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban Szilvester Csollany acknowledged on Facebook.

Gymnasts who died as a result of a corona infection: Csollany is the 2000 Olympic champion

Szilvester Csollany became Olympic ring champion at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 after winning the silver medal in Atlanta in 1996.

In 2002 the Hungarian was crowned world champion on the same device in his native Debrecen.

Before that he had won five world championship silver medals and one European title in his career.

In 2000 and 2002, Csollany was Hungary's Sportsman of the Year.

The Hungarian Olympic champion in gymnastics is not the only case of celebrities speaking out against corona vaccinations and falling ill as a result of being infected with the virus.

At the beginning of January 2021, an anti-vaccination activist and QAnon activist died as a result of a corona infection*.

While still in the hospital, she denied the disease.

(ms/dpa)