The Times - UK (2022-06-11)

When Erriyon Knighton began this

school year, some of his fellow

students at Hillsborough High

School, Tampa, asked for pictures

with the teenager; one even

requested his autograph. Knighton,

then 17, had become the youngest

man to race in

an individual

Olympic track

final in 125 years,

in the men’s 200m

in Tokyo.

His classmates

may have been

impressed by that

milestone last

summer, but

Knighton, 18, was

not content. He

finished in fourth

place, behind the

winner, Andre De

Grasse, and his US

team-mates Kenneth

Bednarek and Noah

Lyles. Knighton’s

coach, Mike Holloway, had a simple

message for him: to remember his

frustration and how “you don’t want

to ever feel this way again”.

Those words should serve as a

warning for Knighton’s rivals given

what he has achieved since turning

professional less than 18 months ago.

Knighton had been tipped for a

career in American football but

turned his focus entirely to

the track when Covid

measures restricted his

ability to play. His

progress since has

been rapid. At the

2020 US Junior

Olympics, he claimed

the 200m title with a

time of 20.33sec, while

he broke Usain Bolt’s

200m under-18 record last

summer. Like Bolt, Knighton

competes in both the 200m and

100m, while he has a similar rangy

height and stride to the eight-times

gold medallist. The American now

has Bolt’s 200m world record of 19.19

in his sights. He ran a 19.49 at the

LSU Invitational last month, a time

that only Bolt, Yohan Blake and

Michael Johnson have bettered.

“I want the world record,”

Knighton said recently. “But if it

doesn’t come, I won’t be really

bothered. I’ve still got ten years left.”

The next goal for Knighton is the

US Championships at the end of

this month, where he can ensure

qualification for a home World

Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

THE NEXT

BIG THING

Erriyon Knighton

6 At 6ft 3in, he was a

promising wide receiver

in American football

6 Took up sprinting

after the pandemic

and ran a 20.33sec

200m in the 2020

US Junior Olympics

6 Aged 17 years and 187

days, he came fourth in

the 200m in Tokyo — as

the youngest US male

track athlete at an

Olympics for 57 years

6 Broke Usain Bolt’s

200m under-18 record

19.49

Knighton’s under-20

world-record time in the

200m, the fourth-fastest

time in the event

in history

Tomás Hill López-Menchero

Only Bolt, Blake and Johnson have recorded faster 200m times

the times | Saturday June 11 2022 1GS 23

Xyxyxyxyxyxy Sport

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A look back at some of the greatest moments in sporting history

I

f a football historian had been

given the task of selecting a

venue for England to host

Hungary, they would have

picked Molineux.

As it is, the FA selected the home

of Wolverhampton Wanderers for

Tuesday’s Nations League meeting

for mundane reasons, specifically

availability and that it is the turn of

the West Midlands to welcome the

Three Lions. Yet football owes a

debt to a meeting that took place

on this ground 68 years ago. On

December 13, 1954, First Division

champions Wolves welcomed their

Hungarian counterparts, Budapest

Honved, for a game billed as a world

championship match. Before the days

of formal European competition, tour

matches such as these brought the

continent’s best players together in

exhibitions that laid bare their

readiness for proper tournament

football. This was the game that gave

birth to the European Cup.

It came five months after the

Hungarian national team’s defeat in

the 1954 World Cup final, a 3-2 loss

against West Germany in

Switzerland that became known as

“the Miracle of Bern”.

The 1954 final was supposed to

have been Hungary’s long-awaited

coronation. They had become the

first team to win away to England

when they triumphed 6-3 at

Wembley in 1953, following up with a

7-1 win in Budapest a year later. The

coach, Gusztav Sebes, had

revolutionised tactics by employing

the first deep-lying forward.

Hungary’s players were fitter and

more physical than their opponents.

There was also an efficient synergy

between Hungary’s domestic and

international football. Since 1949,

when Honved had been converted

into the club of the Hungarian armed

forces, the club had become a

breeding ground for a national team

that lost only a single game — the

World Cup final — between 1950-56.

Six of those who started at Molineux

had played in Bern, including the

attacking three: Ferenc Puskas,

Sandor Kocsis and Zoltan Czibor.

Honved lost to Wolves at

Molineux in the same way that

Hungary had lost the final, by

chucking away an early 2-0 lead to

go down 3-2. But whatever demons

lurked in the heads of Hungary’s

golden generation were nothing to

the waiting tragedy that would choke

the country two years later.

The Soviet invasion of Hungary,

launched to put down a brief anti-

Communist revolution, reached

Budapest on November 4, 1956. By

then Puskas, Czibor and Kocsis had

defected. Honved had been in Spain

to play a tie in the inaugural

European Cup against Athletic

Bilbao when the revolution erupted,

and the team elected not to return. It

marked the end of Hungary’s time as

the world’s best team, and of

Honved’s moment as a European

heavyweight.

But were it not for that night at

Molineux in December 1954, history

might have taken another course.

After the game, Wolves’ victorious

manager, Stan Cullis, declared his

team “the champions of the world”

and asserted English football to be

“the unbeatable article... the best of

its kind in the world”.

Not everybody agreed. The French

journalist Gabriel Hanot, writing in

L’Équipe, doubted that Wolves were

any better than Real Madrid or AC

Milan and proposed “a European

championship between clubs”. Days

later the paper published the first

proposal for how the tournament

might look. The European Cup was

launched by Uefa the following year.

Had it not been, Puskas and the rest

would not have been in Bilbao when

the government was overthrown.

There might still have been time to

avenge the Miracle of Bern.

Much of the impetus for a decisive

means of crowning Europe’s best

team came from the fact that, even in

defeat, Honved had been the better

side. But they got bogged down in

the soggy pitch, while Wolves

successfully bypassed it with long

balls that ultimately won the day.

As one Hungarian paper put it:

“Credit goes to Wolverhampton for

defeating these football artists. But

let’s not fool ourselves. The

Hungarians are still wonderful and

played better than the Wanderers.”

1954

MOLINEUX HOSTS

HUNGARIANS

Robert O’Connor

DAVID BAGNALL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Billy Wright,

left, and

Puskas lead

out their teams

at Molineux