SKIING IN HUNGARY IN GENERAL
Skiing in Hungary started its conquest in the 19th century. In 1837 the newspaper called „Regélő" reported on the fact that a young gentlemen from Bergen ran around the Market hall of Pest on „Norvegian sledeges". After a long period of silence, in 1892 Istvan Chernel who was an Ornithologist from Kőszeg (West-Hungary) introduced his "snowboarding" skills that he learnt from the Norwegen Pole-researcher Nansen. Later, in 1896 he also published a book called „The book of feet-tobogganing" the first Hungarian book about ski instructing. The very same year skiing was introduced in Budapest by two Hungarian gymnasts Mihály Bély and Károly Demény who gained their knowledge from a German youth magazine's article.
The beginning of the 20th century brought a significant improvement. In 1908 a ski competition was organized in Dorog (North-Hungary). The same year the Hungarian Ski Club (MSK) was founded which organized the first Hungarian National Championships in 1911. Hungary had a sport club with 14 ski sections who then established the Hungarian Ski Federation (MSISZ) in 1913 as one of the first in the world.
The skiing revolution and the development was cut by the decisions of the Peace-Treaty Trianon after the First World War since Hungary lost its mountains above 1000 meters (3333Ft approx.).
The 70's brought skiing back into fashion in Hungary just like all over the world, reacreational skiing started its conquest. Today, Hungary has an estimated number of five to seven-hundred-thousand alpine skiers. With this number skiing has become one of the largest segment in our leisure sports. The International Ski associations highly respect and recognize this result as Hungary is considered to be a county of the plains ("puszta" which means flat-country).
