Adalbert Rethi (6 May 1943,

Târgu Mureș Târgu Mureș (, ; hu, Marosvásárhely ) is the seat of Mureș County in the historical region of Transylvania, Romania. It is the 16th largest Romanian city, with 134,290 inhabitants as of the 2011 census. It lies on the Mureș River, th ...

- 14 October 2008,

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...

) was an ethnic Hungarian

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

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...

. While playing for Dinamo Târgu Mureș he was discovered by

Farkas Paneth Farkas Paneth (23 March 1917, Cluj, Austro-Hungary – 23 June 2009, Cluj, Romania) was a Jewish-Romanian table tennis player and coach who played for Romania. He started playing on a tailoring table using firewood instead of a net. As a player ...

, who took him to CSM Cluj. His first international success was at the 1959 Youth Table Tennis European Championship, where he won the doubles competition with

Radu Negulescu Radu Negulescu (born 22 March 1941, in Bistrița) is a former Romanian table tennis player who won 23 national and 17 international titles. He started playing table tennis at the age of nine. In his youth, he also played soccer and handball at th ...

. At the 1962 Youth European Championship he won a silver medal in the doubles competition, and a bronze in the singles competition. In the national championships he won 16 titles, among them three in the singles competition four in the doubles with

, one in the mixed with Eleonora Mihalcă and the rest as a team member of CSM Cluj (alongside

Dorin Giurgiuca Dorin Giurgiuca (December 8, 1944, Mihalț, Alba County, Romania - June 4, 2013) was a Romanian international table tennis player and coach. Table tennis career Moving at a very young age with his family to Dej, he started playing table tennis ...

, etc.), a team with which he won five European Club Cup Championships. Between 1959 and 1967 he participated in five

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 me ...

and several

Table Tennis European 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 ...

Private

Adalbert Rethi was the son of an officer's family. After high school, he studied

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

at the

Babeș-Bolyai University The Babeș-Bolyai University ( ro, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai , hu, Babeș-Bolyai Tudományegyetem, commonly known as UBB) is a public research university located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. UBB has a long academic tradition, started by Universitas ...

Cluj ; hu, kincses város) , official_name=Cluj-Napoca , native_name= , image_skyline= , subdivision_type1 = County , subdivision_name1 = Cluj County , subdivision_type2 = Status , subdivision_name2 = County seat , settlement_type = City , le ...

, and became a lawyer. In 1972 he married his first wife and emigrated to Hungary, to

Cegléd Cegléd (; german: Zieglet) is a city in Pest county, Hungary, approximately southeast of the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Name The name of the town is of disputed origin. The name may be derived from the word "szeglet" (meaning "corner") due t ...

. Later he married a second time. In 2008 he died after a long illness, leaving behind two children.

Awards

Master of Sports, 1964

Results from the ITTF-databank

ITTF-statistics
(accessed 8 March 2012)

References

* Prof. Dr. med

: ''In Memoriam - Adalbert Rethy'', Swaythling Club International News Nr. 86, March 2009, p. 1
Online (accessed 8 March 2012)
(PDF; 1,8 MB) Results at the European Championship
(accessed 8 March 2012)
(accessed 8 March 2012)
(accessed 8 March 2012)
(accessed 8 March 2012)

External links

Obituary (Romanian) (accessed 8 March 2012)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rethi, Adalbert 1943 births 2008 deaths Romanian male table tennis players Romanian sportspeople of Hungarian descent Romanian expatriate sportspeople in Hungary Sportspeople from Târgu Mureș