We talked to Dr. Bettina Abiwu-Türk, athlete at the Nyíregyháza Sports Centre, to get a glimpse into her life behind the sport. We asked her about her profession, her private life, her origins and of course one of the great loves of her life, athletics. This time we weren't interested in his achievements, but in the road to them.
His father was born in Ghana, of Ewe descent, from a royal family, the tenth child of a large family raised a few degrees from the equator, on the border of Togo, where the family's cocoa fields were. Akans, Mossi, Ewe, Ashanti, Fani, Yoruba, are just a few of the more than 15 ethnic groups, all speaking different languages. The official language in Ghana is English, but Togo is now in French-speaking territory, so French is the second compulsory language at school. As an oil engineer, his father, who speaks six languages, came to Hungary on a scholarship and after a year at the University of Miskolc he took his courses in Hungarian. He graduated as the only red graduate, and in his fourth year he was snapped up by Szolnok Petroleum Research Company, so after Miskolc, Szolnok became the home of the Ghanaian specialist.
It was in Miskolc that he met and started a family with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hungarian girl, Betti's mother. Betti spent her happy childhood in Szolnok with her sister, who was a year older than her sister, where her parents' work had brought her. After Szolnok, they settled in Telki to continue the family business, which had already begun in Szolnok, close to Pest because of business connections in Budapest.
"At first glance, no one thinks of me as half-breed, most people think of me as being of African-American descent, that is, typically having both parents black. To this day, everyone here is surprised that my mother has blonde hair and blue eyes. And how well I speak Hungarian. Obviously, because I was born in Miskolc and I am a Hungarian citizen."
The family split into three for a while, her sister spent a year in America as a university student, then graduated in economics in Miskolc, her father started working in Syria, and her mother continued to run the family business. Her father got another job, so the parents flew out to Oman for 15 years, the university children stayed in the house and organised their lives responsibly. Betti visited Oman several times, spending the first half of each university term with her parents.
She started her university years at the University of Pécs, followed by ELTE. In the meantime, in 2010, he started working in the sports department of MTV after winning the "Reporter Wanted" competition, where Gábor Gundel-Takács became his mentor. He finally graduated in 2011 and continued his career as a trainee lawyer and then as a lawyer after passing the bar exam.
As a child, Betti played ballet, guitar, took solfege and private singing lessons. At primary school, where she studied sports, maths and English, she started to play gymnastics and at the same time athletics. She participated in student Olympics from the age of 7 or 8, and her medal collection in 10 years (1989-1999) reached 135 medals and many cups. Gymnastics was abandoned in favour of tennis and athletics (until 1995). Her supportive but strict upbringing enabled a young girl to take part in a wide range of extra lessons and training sessions, in addition to her academic excellence. Her parents did their best and accompanied Betti and her sister everywhere.
"I remember that my record was that one year I was six times Hungarian champion: there was a relay, there were two team events, a combined, and the individual events... long jump, triple jump, high jump, only six trials at that time... I never finished the seven trials. It's still a bucket list thing, but..."
She and her husband got married in 2015 in Nyíregyháza after an unusual meeting. They had a little son, who follows his mother's example and wears out the tracks of the Nyíregyháza Athletics Centre every day. Because Betti slowly went back to the track after having a child. She had previously spent a lot of time in Nyíregyháza at training camps, competed on all athletics tracks in the country, and so she and her coach, Béla Bakosi - without whom, Betti says, she would not be where she is today - greeted each other as old acquaintances. She currently works as a lawyer, where her flexible, albeit often demanding, schedule does not conflict with sport, especially as everything in Nyíregyháza is within 10-15 minutes by car.
The Nyíregyháza athlete balances training, competitions, family evenings, activities and work.
"You need a job like this, a husband like this, a coach like this, a child like this and a city like this to live in. In Budapest I think this would be impossible, I spent half of my 13 years there in traffic. I wouldn't change that for any money. It's a vicious circle, you can't have one without the other."
