Richard Bergmann (10 April 1919 – 5 April 1970) was an Austrian and British 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. Winner of seven World Championships, including four Singles, one Men's Doubles, two Team's titles and 22 medals in total. He is considered to be one of the greatest players in history, only

Viktor Barna Viktor Győző Barna (Braun) (24 August 1911 – 27 February 1972) was a Hungarian and British champion table tennis player as well as a record five times singles World Champion. He won 41 World Championship medals and also won 20 English Ope ...

has won more World Championship gold medals in singles.

Table tennis career

His 22 World Championship medals include seven

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 men's team, one in the men's doubles at the

1936 World Table Tennis Championships The 1936 World Table Tennis Championships were held in Prague from March 12 to March 18, 1936. The championships were criticised for the bad management and poor tables. The Lucerna Palace arena (a 4,000-seat, underground concert hall) conditions ...

with

and four times in the singles at the 1937, 1939, 1948 and 1950.

Legacy

Bergmann was inducted into the

International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame ( he, יד לאיש הספורט היהודי, translit=Yad Le'ish HaSport HaYehudi) was opened July 7, 1981 in Netanya, Israel. It honors Jewish athletes and their accomplishments from anywhere around ...

in 1982, and into the

International Table Tennis Foundation Hall of Fame This page lists the members inducted in the ITTF Hall of Fame – founded in 1993 – in the order as they appear in the official hall of fame maintained by the International Table Tennis Federation. The ITTF Hall of Fame includes both table tennis ...

in 1993 as one of twelve founding members. Since 1967, the Richard Bergmann Fair Play Trophy is contested at the Liebherr World Championships.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergmann, Richard 1919 births 1970 deaths Sportspeople from Vienna Austrian male table tennis players Jewish table tennis players Austrian Jews Austrian people of Polish-Jewish descent Austrian people of Italian descent English Jews English people of Austrian-Jewish descent Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism English male table tennis players

Table tennis career

Legacy

See also

References