National water polo player Árpád Domján died at his home in Los Angeles on April 27 at the age of 92, Telex learned from family friend László Markovits. With his departure, not a single member of the 1956 Olympic champion, the water polo team that became legendary with the bloody match against the Soviets, is alive.
Domján was born on the fourth of February 1932 in Budapest, he first chose football, then his father introduced him to the water polo coach Ferenc Keserű in the Császár swimming pool, who taught him to swim, and since he was not clumsy with the ball, he was included in the Ferencváros team. He made his debut in the national team in August 1955, as Dezső Gyarmati’s back partner, where he played four times.
Sándor Domján in the M5 Újvilági portraits program – Source: M5
For the 1956 Olympics that’s how he got to Melbournethat his love, Kató Szőke, who had already won two Olympic golds four years earlier, said that if Árpád could not stay with the team, then he would not travel either. The sports management agreed, but captain Béla Rajki didn’t like him and didn’t put him in the team, so he couldn’t be an Olympic champion.
“It didn’t hurt me, and after all these years it doesn’t matter. Although it wasn’t even then. My wonderful wife was already a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, her father, Márton Homonnai, was also a two-time winner in water polo. Maybe that many champions are enough for a family. I didn’t suffer mentally, Rajki made a decision, I had to accept it. I was the team’s biggest fan. I remember being overheated with emotion, sometimes to a game full of hatred against the Soviets. Some people turned away and spat after the handshake, because we already knew that the revolution had been crushed. It was a great experience of my life, even if I wasn’t in the pool.” he declared in 2019, when he visited home.
Domján did not return home from Australia, he went to the United States, where he settled with Szőke, whom he married in 1961. He consciously changed his name to Domyan, because he didn’t like jt being pronounced dz, and with ipsilon it was possible to preserve the original sound.
At first he was employed as a technical draftsman, later he founded his own company. He became a successful entrepreneur, lived in Beverly Hills, loved the opera and supported it among many other things. They had a son, Bryan, who designs luxury apartments and speaks excellent Hungarian. Domján lost his wife in October 2017, who was also chosen among the immortals of swimming. With Domján, the last great classic of the legendary team left.
