Gertrude Pritzi (15 January 1920 - 21 October 1968) was a female international

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

player from

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Table tennis career

From 1937 to 1953, she won fourteen medals in singles, doubles and team events in the

World Table Tennis Championships The World Table Tennis Championships are table tennis competitions sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). The World Championships have been held since 1926, biennially since 1957. Five individual events, which include men ...

. She also won doubles and team medals in the

European Table Tennis Championships The European Table Tennis Championships is an international table tennis competition for the national teams of the member associations of the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU). First held in 1958, the ETTU organised the European Championships ever ...

. The champion of Women's Singles in 1937 was declared vacant due to time limit rule in force at the time. In 2001, it was decided to declare the two players (i.e., Gertrude Pritzi and

Ruth Aarons Ruth Hughes Aarons (June 11, 1918 – June 6, 1980) was a US table tennis player, vaudeville entertainer, and talent manager. Early life Ruth Aarons was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Leila (née Hughes), an opera singer, and Alfred E. Aaron ...

) Co-Champions. She began her table tennis career with the association Badner AC, changed 1936 finally to post office sports association Vienna and 1945 to Austria Vienna. In 1937 and 1938 she won and became generally accepted the Austrian championship thereby against the Trude Wildam prevailing at that time. After the annexation of Austria by Germany, she participated in the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

of 1939 for

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The fourteen World Championship medals included five

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...

s; two in the women's singles, one in the women's team event and two in the doubles with

Hilde Bussmann Hildegard Bussmann (24 November 1914 – 10 January 1988) was an international table tennis player from Germany. She was born in Düsseldorf. Table tennis career From 1934 to 1939 she won eight medals in singles, doubles and team events in ...

and Gizi Farkas.

References

1920 births 1968 deaths Austrian female table tennis players Sportspeople from Vienna {{Austria-tabletennis-bio-stub

Table tennis career

See also

References