When Fukuoka, planned hosts of the 2022 edition, postponed the event because of rising COVID-19 cases in Japan, the Hungarian capital - which had staged the 2017 edition with huge success and had already secured the 2027 Championships - presented itself as the ideal alternative.

Once FINA President Husain Al-Musallam had spoken with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the 19^th edition was on its way to the 5,000-capacity venue that had so capably hosted the 17^th edition - The Duna Arena, part of the expansive portfolio of buildings constructed in Budapest under the supervision of Balázs Fürjes.

For the last 15 years Fürjes, now 50 and Deputy Minister in Orbán’s office, has been responsible for the development of his home city, delivering major construction and infrastructure projects. And for the last seven years he has also overseen the delivery of major international sporting events to many of those facilities.

The list of completed civil projects includes two universities and a Jewish museum - The House of Faith - with large-scale work currently underway at the Nyugati Rail Station, the Liszt Ferenc (Bud) Airport and the Galvani Bridge.

In the sporting realm Fürjes presided over the creation of the MVM Dome, one of Europe’s largest multi-purpose indoor arenas with a capacity of 20,000, the Ferencvaros Arena, the Papp Laszlo Budapest Arena, the Debrecen Velodrome, the 65,000 Puskas Stadium for the national football team, the National Athletics Centre, with a current capacity of 36,000, and, last but not least, the Duna Arena.

The whole complex is fit for an Olympics - and indeed the 2024 Olympics were sought by Budapest, with Fürjes operating as chairman of the bid. That ambition proved unsuccessful as Paris secured those Games, with Los Angeles being named for the 2028 edition. But the Olympic Flame of aspiration still burns brightly within the Hungarian National Olympic Committee.

While the Olympics may be a while coming to Budapest - although they surely must before too long - Fürjes has been able to attract a list of global and international sporting events.

The 2017 and 2021 International Judo Federation (IJF) World Championships took place in the capital, to which the Federation has now re-located. Other major events secured included the inaugural World Urban Games in 2019 and next year’s World Athletics Championships.

As for aquatics, Budapest, which also hosted the 2021 European Swimming Championships, can count itself the world capital.

The assessment given by the former International Swimming Federation President Julio Maglione at the conclusion of the 2017 World Championships, which he described as "the best ever", has been proudly acknowledged by the city’s custodians.

"Obviously that is an endorsement that not only the venues were superb for the FINA 2017 {World Championships} but also the hosting and the organisation," Fürjes told insidethegames. "We did it from our heart. And that’s an added value for sure.

"Of course we are in a completely different situation now than back then, in that there is nothing to build. We have every venue with the only exception of high diving, which is now being organised separately by FINA. It is only the organisation that has to be done."

Fürjes, a lawyer with significant private sector experience in international business law and real estate development, added: "Aquatics is particularly important for us. There are the so-called global sports that are followed and liked and watched everywhere - football, tennis, basketball, athletics and swimming.

"And out of these right now - and I hope it will be changing, don’t forget this week’s 4-0 win by Hungary over the England football team! I hope that our football comes back to what it used to be - it is only in aquatics where Hungarian athletes are at world level.

"I hope we will have a future Olympic tennis player, but for a long time it has been wholly and exclusively swimming - that is, aquatics, because there is water polo as well.

"Also there is a special link between the FINA family and ourselves, because their first Olympic champion was our first Olympic gold medal. At the 1896 Athens Olympics the first ever gold medal in swimming was won by our Alfred Hajos.

"He was a very interesting person by the way. He won in the 100m and the 1,200m in a certain degree water - in the sea, because it was organised there. He was a Renaissance person such as it is hard to find any more.

"He was also a football player, and a football coach. He was an architect by profession, and he designed the venue which is now named after him which held the water polo at Budapest 2017 and will be its major venue for Budapest 2022, and then I believe also for 2027.

"Because Budapest will be the only city hosting three FINA World Championships within 10 years."

While Hajos may have been the architect of that aquatic complex on the city’s Margaret Island, Fürjes can claim to be the architect of much of the capital’s sporting capital - both in terms of facilities and events. It demonstrates an impressive range of accomplishment in terms of fine details and the bigger picture.

"You learn it by experience," Fürjes reflected. "It is very important to be able to listen; maybe that’s the most important thing. And when you believe that you are already there and you can do things easily, then it’s even more important to be able to learn, because that’s when you make mistakes.

"What I have been doing in the last 20 years is city-building and on top of that in the last seven years major sport events. So definitely city planning, city development, planning, designing and delivering major projects, that’s something that I’m educated for.

"When I got into it, you may say by accident, and surprisingly to me, what attracted me, I can tell you in particular, was creativity. City building and creating the venues and other city infrastructure is a very creative process.

"From the moment of a good idea to take a long journey and be able to deliver that idea will be the work of a few years.

"One thing comes to my mind about good ideas. About 10 years ago I was working very closely with Professor Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik’s Cube. We were working on an idea, and he told me: ‘Balaczs, the big thing is not to have a good idea. The world is full of millions of good ideas. The key thing is that you can realise your good idea and deliver it.’

"When he told me that I immediately realised that he had experience behind it. The Rubik’s Cube was a fantastic invention which came up in the very stupid, bureaucratic and non-creative period of socialism. So he had that fight of many years to make sure that good idea was delivered and launched on the world market."

A Rubik’s Cube, requiring methodical manipulation in order to arrange a complex range of elements into a correct order, seems an apt metaphor for the task Fürjes has been engaged in. It is a suggestion he embraces.

"Yes, exactly, you have to get the cube in the right position at the end of the day.

"I think you need three key things, maybe. Definitely creativity, to be able to have a dream and then work hard to deliver that dream.

"The other thing is that you need to be a team player - it’s never an individual achievement. You have to be the team captain that is able to co-operate with and manage the joint work of totally different people coming from totally different professions with totally different approaches and goals.

"And at the end of the day somehow we have to go in the same direction and act as a team.

"The third thing that is very important is humbleness. If you are not humble enough it does not work. Because every project must serve a purpose, and it’s not about you.

"Dream, plan, execute. But dream freely and bravely, be responsible in planning and very precise, focused and disciplined in execution.

"The secret is, that you need to have the freedom, creativity, playfulness of dreaming and the precision and discipline to deliver at the same time. Together, so the freedom of dreaming does not crock execution and the discipline of delivery does not stifle the dream."

The dream of an Olympic Games in Budapest, meanwhile, abides.

"Bidding for the Olympic Games was more than a hundred years’ dream of Hungarians," Fürjes recalled. "One of the founding members of the International Olympic Committee, Ferenc Kemeny,  a very good friend to Baron Pierre De Coubertin, had the dream back in 1894 when the IOC was established. But it was not on the agenda for a long time."

The first part of the Candidates File presented to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by Budapest in 2016 asserted that the Olympics would mark "a new beginning" for a "right-sized" city, the smallest of the four bidders, the others being Paris, Los Angeles and Rome.

The bid nodded firmly to many of the key areas mentioned in the IOC’s Agenda 2020 document, emphasising cost-effectiveness, sustainability, use of existing buildings and a long-term legacy. There was a growing popular movement that opposed the staging, but in 2015 the city had rejected calls to stage a referendum on the issue.

"When we were not successful in our bid for the 2024 Games, of course we were sad because we really believed in the project because it would have been for the good of the nation and for the good of the global Olympic family," Fürjes said.

"But what we realised when we evaluated after the decision was that we should never give up the dream. Regardless of the dream, however, regardless of any time in my life or whether a future generation can achieve the Games here, sport is of essence for the society.

"And hosting major events in Budapest and making the city one of the truly global sport capitals is beneficial for the Hungarian and maybe even the central European societies, even without the Games happening at any time.

"So of course it’s a very important thing, it’s always the privilege of the Hungarian National Olympic Committee (NOC) to come up with any ideas at any time to approach the Games. It must be an NOC initiative. It is even embodied of the statutes of the Hungarian Olympic Committee that it is their duty to pursue the dream.

"But even without the Olympic Games happening in Budapest at any time it is a global sports capital beneficiary for the nation."

It is also a powerful political tool for the Government of Orbán.

While London is still struggling to untangle the respective claims of football and athletics at its main 2012 Olympic stadium, Budapest appears to have got around such problems by building separate facilities in the Puskas Arena and the National Athletics Centre.

"It’s always a luxury if you do things after others because you can learn from their experiences," Fürjes said.

"We carefully studied the experiences of countries in various continents, and for a football stadium one of the basic questions is if you make it suitable for both athletics and football, and the conclusion is that there are just too many compromises and it will not be ideal for either of them.

"That’s why there are separate stadiums. The National Athletics Centre will be 36,000 capacity for next year’s World Championships through temporary seating. But after the Championships the temporary seats will be removed and there will be a 15,000 capacity stadium that will be a very good idea for national, regional and European competitions as well as Diamond League meetings."

Meanwhile Fürjes has other things to attend to - not least the demands of a toddler, the youngest of his three children. "I have two grown-up children and a two-year-old son," he said. "He is making me work and move a lot in my private life!"

A keen sportsman, Fürjes particularly enjoys swimming, road cycling, football and skiing.

"I always did sport, I was never particularly talented, no major achievement. Obviously football. I’m getting a bit older so I have to be careful but I still enjoy playing very much.

"What takes me out of myself is skiing. We are a flat country but Austria is very close.

"The thing about skiing is that in every regard you are in a totally different context than in your everyday life. You are out in nature, up in the hills, snow, cold, and the movement and the sport you do is so different to your normal activity. And of course the adrenaline when you speed down the slope is really refreshing."

And what, one wonders, is his favourite event from those that have been secured by Budapest?

"If I need to pick one, it is the first ever World Urban Games (WUG) at Budapest in 2019. In sport too, we need to respect traditions. But the secret of Olympics is that the Games were always relevant at the time. The Olympic family must keep the Games relevant.

"And maybe today it is not exactly the same thing that is relevant as it was decades ago. Change or be changed, as IOC President Thomas Bach keeps saying.

"To find the right path, one needs to try, to test, to experiment. The WUG in Budapest with BMX, 3x3 basketball, breakdance, laser run, was definitely an experiment worth having. It was a very engaging event, people and families were participants and not just viewers. It was a great urban sport festival in a re-utilised brownfield area. I just loved it."

No doubt it will be back soon…