Miklós Szabados

Miklós Szabados
Full name	SZABADOS Miklós
Nationality	Hungary
Medal record Men's table tennis Competitor for  Hungary World Championships Silver 1937 Baden Team Bronze 1936 Prague Team Silver 1935 Wembley Singles Gold 1935 Wembley Doubles Bronze 1935 Wembley Mixed Doubles Gold 1935 Wembley Team Bronze 1934 Paris Singles Gold 1934 Paris Doubles Gold 1934 Paris Mixed Doubles Gold 1934 Paris Team Silver 1932 Prague Singles Gold 1932 Prague Doubles Silver 1932 Prague Mixed Doubles Silver 1932 Prague Team Gold 1931 Budapest Singles Gold 1931 Budapest Doubles Gold 1931 Budapest Mixed Doubles Gold 1931 Budapest Team Gold 1930 Berlin Doubles Gold 1930 Berlin Mixed Doubles Gold 1930 Berlin Team Silver 1929 Budapest Singles Gold 1929 Budapest Doubles Gold 1929 Budapest Team

Miklós Szabados (b. March 7, 1912, in Budapest, Hungary; d. Feb. 12, 1962, in Sydney, Australia) was a Hungarian and Australian table tennis champion.

Szabados won 15 World Championship titles, including the World Singles crown in 1931.

Table tennis career

Szabados was one of the two most successful table tennis champions of his time, the other being Viktor Barna.

Miklós Szabados, was born of Catholic parents on 7 March 1912 in Budapest, younger son of Sandor Szabados, flour-mill manager, and his wife Rosa, née Schwartz, a professor of languages and history. After receiving a table tennis set from his mother for his thirteenth birthday, Miklos developed a passion for the game. He won his first major tournament in Hungary in 1927 by beating his friend Victor Barna. He attributed his success to hard work and concentration.

From 1928 to 1935, Szabados captured six World Doubles titles (1929–32 and 1934–35 with Barna), three Mixed Doubles (1930, 1931, and 1934 with M. Mednyanszky), and five times was a member of the Hungarian World Championship (Swaythling Cup) Team (1929–31, 1934, and 1935). In 1931, he won all four World events — men’s Singles, Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and the Swaythling Cup.^[1]

He began studying engineering at the University of Berlin, but, being of Jewish descent,even though he was raised in the Catholic religion, he fled to Paris in 1933, and then Britain in 1936.

In 1937, Szabados and countryman Istvan Kelen embarked on a two-year exhibition tour of the Far East and South America, and Australia. Sponsored by the New South Wales Table Tennis Association, they competed in the Australian championships in Sydney. The Hungarian pair won every match: Szabados defeated Kelen in four sets in the singles title, and they won the doubles in straight sets. Upon completion of this tour they returned to Europe.

Returning to Australia in 1939, Szabados settled in Sydney. By 1941 he owned a table tennis club in Pitt St. On the 26 December 1941 he married, with Presbyterian forms Marie Alice Bracher, (now Marie Alice Kuliffay) an artist and millinery designer. They had one son, Sandor, before being divorced in 1954. Miklos was called up by the Allied Works Council and served as a truck driver at Alice Springs, Northern Territory, in 1943–44. During this period as a "truck driver" he used his time to play and teach Table Tennis to his fellow Works Council colleagues and play Bridge with the Northern Territory's Administrators wife. As a result he played more Bridge than anything else as he was already an NSW Bridge champion.

He won the Australian Table Tennis Championship in singles (1950 and 1952), doubles (1950) and mixed doubles (1955).

Operating table tennis academies, he was prominent in coaching younger players, including his son Sandor. Two of his protégés became Australian singles champions — Cliff McDonald (1959, 1964 and 1966) and Michael Wilcox (1963 and 1967). He also played matches with celebrities such as the tennis player Bobby Riggs (1948) and the concert pianist Julius Katchen (1955).

Style of play

Szabados was strong and muscular. He had clever footwork, good defense, a fierce forehand, and an effective long game. He developed his own unique stroke, a backhand forehand (hitting with a backhand action on the forehand side). He attributed his success to hard work and concentration.

Hall of Fame

Szabados was born a Catholic in 1912. (His mother, Rosa Schwarz, changed from being Jewish to Catholic at her marriage.) Miklós died of pneumonia at the age of 49 in 1962. He was never Jewish and thus it was erroneous that in 1987 he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. (In 1948, the Geneva based Red Cross wrote to Miklos in Sydney and enclosed a letter that his mother that had sewn into the lining of her winter coat in Auschwitz – and thus he learnt of her death in the holocaust.)

Szabados was inducted into the International Table Tennis Foundation Hall of Fame in 1993.[1]

See also

• List of select Jewish table tennis players

References

1. ^ "ITTF Database". Ittf.com. http://www.ittf.com/ittf_stats/All_events3.asp?ID=6948. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 

External links

• Australian Dictionary of Biography bio
• Jewish Sports bio

Persondata
Name	Szabados, Miklós
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 7, 1912
Place of birth
Date of death	1962
Place of death