Johnny Leach

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Johnny Leach (between 1939 and 1944)

Johnny Leach (born November 20, 1922 in London - † June 5, 2014 ) was an English table tennis player . He took part in 13 world championships and was twice world champion in singles.

Active career

Leach began playing table tennis at the Romford YMCA club. In the early 1940s he served in the Royal Air Force in Northern Ireland . During this time he trained with Jack Carrington until 1949 . With this he won the silver medal in doubles when he first participated in a world championship in 1947. Two years later - in 1949 - he became individual world champion for the first time. He was able to repeat this success at the 1951 World Cup. In the following years he won several medals. In 1953 he was team world champion with the English team. With Richard Bergmann in doubles, he took second place twice, the same was achieved in 1952 in mixed with Diane Rowe , the later wife of Eberhard Schöler . Leach was last at a World Cup in 1963. In the ITTF world rankings , he was ranked first in 1951. Together with Richard Bergmann, Leach traveled all over the world in the mid-1950s and organized exhibition fights.

Johnny Leach was a defender . To this day he is the last individual world champion to play defense.

Activities as a functionary

In the 1950s he became Managing Director of the company that manufactured and marketed his clubs. The wine-red and highly elastic "Leach" pimple rubber sold by his company and the racket wrapped with a perforated leather cord were still considered an "insider tip" among the more aggressive pimple rubber specialists until the mid-1970s.

After the end of his active career, he took on a few offices as a functionary. First, the English Table Tennis Association named him the "non-playing captain" of the British team. For a long time he was President of Haverhill, where he also played golf and occasionally took part in the Pro-Am tournaments. Since 1961 he was also president of the Essex County Table Tennis Association. Finally in 1988 he became president of the English table tennis association ETTA . He held this position for 24 years before being replaced by Keith Ponting in 2012.

In 1966, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the title of MBE ( Member of the British Empire ). In 1997 he was inducted into the ITTF Hall of Fame .

Fonts

Leach wrote several textbooks on table tennis:

  • How to play table tennis (1952, Verlag Gerd Hatje Stuttgart)
  • Table Tennis For All (1951)
  • Table Tennis My Way (1955)
  • Table Tennis Complete (1960)
  • Better Table Tennis (1969), ISBN 0-7182-0152-3 .
  • Table Tennis for the 'seventies (1971)
  • Table Tennis Made Easy (1971)

In the 1950s, Leach wrote weekly in the Sunday paper .

Private

Johnny Leach was married and had two sons with his wife Daisy († 2009). He died of a stroke.

successes

In 1950 and 1951, Leach won the international championships in France, Belgium and Wales.

  • 1950 US Open: 1st place singles

Results from the ITTF database

Association event year place country singles Double Mixed team
CLOSELY  European Championship  1962  Berlin  FRG   last 16     
CLOSELY  European Championship  1960  Zagreb  YUG     Quarter finals   
CLOSELY  World Championship  1963  Prague  TCH   no participants  last 16  no participants 
CLOSELY  World Championship  1961  Beijing  CHN   last 128  Scratched  no participants  4th
CLOSELY  World Championship  1959  Dortmund  FRG   last 64  last 64  last 64  9
CLOSELY  World Championship  1957  Stockholm  SWE   last 64  last 16  Quarter finals  11
CLOSELY  World Championship  1956  Tokyo  JPN   last 32  Quarter finals  last 16  5
CLOSELY  World Championship  1955  Utrecht  NED   Quarter finals  Quarter finals  last 16  3
CLOSELY  World Championship  1954  Wembley  CLOSELY   last 32  last 16  Quarter finals  3
CLOSELY  World Championship  1953  Bucharest  ROU   last 16  silver  Quarter finals  1
CLOSELY  World Championship  1952  Bombay  IND   last 16  silver  silver  2
CLOSELY  World Championship  1951  Vienna  AUT   gold  Semifinals  Semifinals  4th
CLOSELY  World Championship  1950  Budapest  HUN   last 16  last 32  Quarter finals  3
CLOSELY  World Championship  1949  Stockholm  SWE   gold  Quarter finals  Semifinals  3
CLOSELY  World Championship  1948  Wembley  CLOSELY   last 16  last 64  Quarter finals  5
CLOSELY  World Championship  1947  Paris  FRA   Semifinals  silver  last 32  7th

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. DTS magazine , 1951/19 issue west-south, page 3
  2. DTS magazine , 1954/21 page 17
  3. DTS magazine , 1998/9 page 5
  4. Sports Top Honor For Keith (accessed April 14, 2012)
  5. DTS magazine , 1997/9 page 15
  6. ^ Johnny Leach results from the ITTF database on ittf.com (accessed September 11, 2011)