Imrich Bugár, the first world champion in men’s discus and an Olympic medalist, dies at 70

By Canadian Press on April 9, 2026.

PRAGUE (AP) — Imrich Bugár, the first world champion in men’s discus and an Olympic medalist for Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 70.

His former club, Dukla, said he died Wednesday but did not disclose the cause of death.

Bugár was born in Ohrady on April 14, 1955 to a Hungarian family in what is now southern Slovakia and was a leading figure in discus in the 1980s.

He won gold at the inaugural IAAF world athletics championships in Helsinki in 1983 with a throw of 67.72 meters. That year, he cleared 70 meters at a different event and his personal best of 71.26 from 1985 still stands as the Czech record.

A silver medalist at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, he was denied the chance of another medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Games because of a boycott by the Soviet Union and its satellites behind the Iron Curtain.

Bugár learned about the decision at a training camp in California.

“I was not ready to take it,” the Dukla announcement quoted him as saying. “I was the best in the world then.”

The Soviet Union said the safety of its athletes was a reason for the move generally understood to be a revenge for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games.

Bugár remembered he challenged the propaganda and told a communist leader that “the only thing I saw in the United States linked to the Soviet Union was an ad for the Russian vodka.” He was advised not to talk about it.

He retired in 1995.

In 2006, he denied media reports he was involved in the state-sponsored doping program under communism and that he had tested positive for anabolic steroids in secret testing before the 1987 world championship in Rome.

He finished seventh at that worlds.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

The Associated Press

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