El Cerrito Olympic Medalist With Enduring Passion for Canoeing

If there is one person who embodies the sport of canoeing, it is Olympic medalist and El Cerrito resident Andy Toro.

Fifty-eight years ago, Toro stepped into a canoe for the first time on the Danube River in Hungary, and now, at age 72, he still trains four days a week at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park doing outrigger canoeing.

His backyard wood shop is littered with small pieces of his work—custom paddles he has built, new fins he has designed for boats, and more.

And inside his house, it’s hard to avoid the shelves of books about canoeing and the Olympics, and the hanging display of his 1960 Summer Games bronze medal, which he won racing for Hungary in the 1000-meter doubles race.  

Toro, who defected to the United States from Hungary in 1964, is an expert in all things all things Olympics and all things canoeing, a sport in which the athlete kneels in a boat and races with a single-bladed paddle. (Kayakers sit and use double-bladed paddles.) In the Olympics, there are singles events with only one paddler per boat, and doubles events with two paddlers per boat.

“I went to all the Olympic Summer Games from 1960 to 1996, either as an athlete, or a coach, or an administrator,” said Toro, who also attended the 1984 and 1988 Winter Games.

Having competed as an athlete in four Olympics—two for Hungary and two for the United States—and served on the U.S. Olympic Committee Board of Directors for about 14 years, Toro is a wealth of information and opinions when it comes to the Olympics.

And according to Toro, things have changed tremendously since the time when he stood on the award podium and received his medal in the summer of 1960, and not necessarily for the better.

The increase of corporate sponsorships, the mass media culture, and the addition of professional athletes—instead of amateurs—have all tainted the original vision of the modern Olympics as established in 1896, Toro said.

Though he is no longer part of the national Olympic Committee, Toro still has strong feelings about how minor sports like canoeing, don't receive the attention they deserve.

Born and raised in the Eastern Block 

Toro was born in 1940 in Budapest, Hungary, to a poor, working class family.

His father was a steam engine mechanic, while his mother raised Toro and his three older brothers at home.

“Being the youngest in the family, I never had new stuff—it was always hand-me-down stuff,” he said. “I didn’t mind it. I always looked up to my brothers and whatever they did, and I was a very happy child.”

Though his parents had little education, Toro said his mother always insisted the children focus in school to try to move ahead in life. But it was canoeing, not school, that gave Toro his opportunity to lead a better life.

According to Toro, canoeing has always been popular in Hungary, but after World War II ended, national and community support for the sport increased dramatically.

There was a canoeing club that was located in Budapest. Like everything at the time, it was funded by the government. Toro said that every May, the club would hold an event similar to a tryout, when local schools would send 14-year-olds to be evaluated.

The coaches would select the children who had the most potential, and it was through one of these tryouts that Toro’s brother closest to him in age, Lajos, started canoeing.

In the summer of 1954, Toro’s brother let him come to the canoe clubhouse to help wash the boats, and soon that led to Toro taking up canoeing as well.

“When you’re young, from 14 to 16, you’re usually in a war canoe, which is a 10-man canoe,” Toro said. “It’s a fantastic life for any kid, to be on the river, sun shining, boating—it’s just an all around great activity.”

After a few years of training, Toro said that he and his brother were the best junior paddlers in Hungary.

But in 1959, while Toro and his brother were practicing for the European championships, his brother became very sick, and because the illness affected his heart, he had to end his canoeing career.

“He was much better than I am, there’s no question about it,” Toro said. “He was a very good competitor, and he would have been Olympic material.”

Rising to Olympic fame

Though the ideal brother-and-brother doubles team was a dashed dream, Toro continued to excel in the sport.

He and his partner, Imre Farkas, qualified for the 1000-meter doubles event of the 1960 Rome Olympics, and at age 20, Toro went to his first Summer Games.

“It’s something you really never forget,” he said. “It’s very emotional and at the same time it’s very exciting and nerve wracking.”

The excitement came to a climax when Toro and Farkas won the bronze medal in their event, finishing less than one-tenth of a second behind the Italian team and three seconds behind the Soviet Union.

After touring Italy—a reward from the Hungarian government for their success—Toro and the team returned to their homeland, and he went back to his daily life of working and training.

Apart from practicing twice a day, Toro had a day job as a factory worker. And about six months out of the year, he was away at training camps.

Though Toro’s success continued to grow and the government continued to support him financially, one thing bothered him. No matter how well he did at the Olympics, he would always have to return to his factory job, and there was no opportunity for advancement.

“I love the country, and I’ll always be Hungarian, but there are some better things in life,” he said. “I knew my capabilities could take me to a little bit higher level socially. I could have a better life.”

Escaping communism 

The build up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was quite normal. Toro had switched from competing in doubles races to competing in singles races, and he dominated at the Hungarian Olympic trials that year, making the cover of the Hungarian equivalent of Sports Illustrated.

Though he told no one of his plan, Toro decided he would defect to the United States, despite the fact that he didn’t speak a word of English.

In Tokyo, Toro narrowly missed out on another medal, earning fourth place in the 1000-meter singles race. He had been hoping for a better result that would have made it more likely he would get a spot in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics—an ideal location to make an escape for the United States.

Because he finished fourth, Toro decided he had to make his move as soon as possible.

But to make it the United States, he needed help from American citizens. So he asked for the help of an American kayaker couple, Bill Smoke and Marcia Jones Smoke.

As Marcia Jones Smoke recalls, another Olympian had told her and Bill before competition began that Toro wanted to defect and needed help. So she phoned her mother, and found out what they needed to do.

Smoke said the whole process was very secretive, but the day after the canoe races were over, Bill and another friend took Toro to by train to the U.S. embassy.

“And it was neat, because my mother had agreed to sponsor him,” Smoke said, explaining that the sponsor was a necessity for Toro to be accepted by the U.S. government.

The next day, Smoke said she saw in the morning paper that Toro and two others had made it to Washington, D.C., and to this day, Toro still has a clipping of that article in The Tokyo Times.

“I was glad we were able to help him start a new life over here, of which I think he’s very grateful,” she said.

New Olympic endeavors in America 

After being processed in Washington, Toro, with the help of Bill Smoke, became a student at the University of Michigan.

He advanced through the English Language Institute in the first six months, and went on to earn a degree in naval architecture.

He also continued canoeing, but now for the United States. In the 1968 Olympics, he had not yet earned citizenship, so he could not compete. But the American team took him along as an advisor.

In his two previous Olympic games, Toro had never had the chance to walk in the opening ceremonies or the closing ceremonies because of scheduling conflicts, and because the last time he was on a plane to the United States.

"I came to the U.S., and I was thinking I can’t die without marching in at least one game," he said. "I promised myself, I’m going to make one more Olympic team, at least."

After gaining citizenship in the early 1970s, Toro made two more Olympic teams, competing in the 1972 Munich Games and the 1976 Montreal Games. In the former, he competed in the 1000-meter singles race, and in the latter he competed in the 1000-meter doubles.

But both times, Toro fell short in the semifinals round.

At age 36, Toro decided it was time to move on from being an Olympic athlete to being a coach and administrator.

In 1978, he joined the U.S. Olympic Committee Athletes Advisory Council, and served on it for 10 years. Around the same time, he also joined the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Board of Directors.

In the infamous 1980 Moscow Olympics, which were boycotted by the United States, Toro was the head coach of the canoeing team. 

As part of the Athletes Advisory Council, Toro was selected as part of a small group who dealt with the White House. Though he said he was devastated by the decision to boycott the Games, he proudly recalls the athletes’ defiance against President Jimmy Carter.

“I had been summoned to the White House…when the president came into the room, we didn’t stand up, cause we knew we were going to shackled,” Toro said.

The incident disillusioned him, Toro said, and for a time he even considered leaving for Australia. But ultimately, he decided to stay, serving as Secretary on the Board of Directors from 1984 to 1988, and even coaching the Barbuda canoeing team in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Amateurs no more, and small sports struggle

The games have changed a great deal from when Toro was a competitor.

According to him, one of the biggest changes has been the decline of the original Olympic ideal that the Games should be for amateur athletes.

“I’m very happy and honored that I could be in the Games when it was still amateur, when it was still pure—pure in the sense that there were no professionals or money involved,” he said.

According to Toro, the 1992 Barcelona Olympics—when NBA players were allowed to compete—opened the floodgates for professional athletes, and with the rise of corporate sponsorships for athletes, amateurism is all but gone.

Toro is also unhappy with how the media has caused the United States to become completely focused on only a handful of sports, like basketball, soccer, and swimming.

At the same time, other sports like handball, badminton, and canoeing/kayaking receive very little funding or attention, even though there are a wealth of American athletes who have the potential to succeed in these sports.

“That was my main thing when I was on the Olympic Committee: how we can introduce a project or program to make all these unknown sports to be available at the high school level or university level,” Toro said. 

During the 1990s, he spoke at several local schools like Albany High and El Cerrito High, trying to encourage student to try different sports, and expand their horizons beyond just basketball and football.

Through his work with the Olympic Committee, Toro is recognized as having had a huge influence on smaller sports in the United States, especially canoeing.

“Andy has been really good for canoeing and kayaking over here,” said Marcia Jones Smoke, who competed at three Olympic Games from 1964 to 1972. “He’s gotten a lot of other people into the sport, which we badly needed.”

Beyond the television

Toro will be the first to admit, that from the start of the London 2012 Opening Ceremonies, he will be glued to the television watching competition.

But having been an athlete at four Olympic Games, Toro knows there are things the television cameras simply cannot capture.

“It doesn’t show the human interaction between countries and athletes. When you really get into the Olympic Village, there is no political differences there, or at least I never felt so,” he said.

Even more important than the interaction between athletes from different nations is the interaction between athletes from the same nation, Toro said.

When he was on the Hungarian team, Toro said there was strong camaraderie between all the Hungarian athletes, regardless of their individual sport—something that was missing when he competed for the United States.

Having been involved with the Olympics for so long, Toro knows there are problems with the Games, and things that can be improved.

But there is an overwhelming sense of idealism and optimism, about both the Olympics and life itself, from the man who managed to escape Hungary and come to the United States to improve his lot.

After college, Toro said he got in a van and started driving west. By 1974, he was in his El Cerrito house, living happily with his wife, Jane.

Toro has a son and daughter, both now adults. His son, Tom, took after his dad and became the captain of Yale’s crew, and now is a cartoonist, .

Since graduating Michigan, Toro has worked as an independent naval architect, a job that helped accommodate his sports-filled schedule.

Apart from the U.S. Olympic Committee, Toro became involved with many international sports organizations, like the International Committee for Fair Play and the International Canoe Federation.

Toro's memberships, leadership roles, and accolades go on and on. Take any canoeing organization—local, national, or international—and chances are that Toro is somehow involved.

His work has brought him back to Hungary on a couple occasions, where he was able to see his family members, who had had no warning Toro was going to defect back in 1964.

Nowadays, he stays mostly in the Bay Area, keeping a low profile in his El Cerrito home.

And at 72 years old and in excellent condition, Toro still canoes four times a week and takes part in competitions from time to time.

Canoeing was what gave Toro the opportunity to come to the United States, and it was the channel through which he first became involved with the Olympics.

And when he talks about the sport to which he has dedicated his life, it is obvious that he is having just as much fun now as he was when he was 14.

Editor's Note: This is the concluding installment in our series of articles on , timed to coincide with the beginning of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The other installments are:

• a July 1 , who represented the U.S. in judo at the Beijing Olympics four years ago
• Matsumoto's  that we reprinted on July 2
• a July 24 profile of Teri McKeever, who's now in London as the first woman in history to be head coach of the US Olympics women's swim team
• a July 25 , who ran for Taiwan in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

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