Marie Šmídová

Marie Šmídová , née Schmiedtová , married Miková (born April 19, 1907 in Prague , † after 1963) was a Czechoslovak table tennis player . At the beginning of her sporting career, she competed under the pseudonym Marie Masáková and gained fame under this name as the first player in the country to take part in international competitions. She was world champion in 1935 and 1936 with the team and also in doubles in 1936.

Career

Marie Schmiedtová was born as the daughter of Václav Schmiedt and his wife Matylda, née Besserová, and grew up in Prague. She began her sporting activities at a time when sport was still considered a male domain and unsuitable for women. For this reason, the majority of the first female athletes used pseudonyms; so did Marie Schmiedtová, who took up the role of Marie Masáková . At the same time she disliked the German family name Schmiedtová; she let him Czechize in the second half of the 1920s in Šmídová .

Initially at SK Čechie Staré Město and later at SK Smíchov, she was active in several sports. In Bohemian handball ( Národní házená ) she played in the national team. As a football player, Marie Masáková was active in the team of tramps of the Spojené osady Údolí slunce on the Sázava. In the mid-1920s she was next to her teammate at SK Smíchov, Marie Mejzlíková, one of the best Czechoslovak discus throwers. Until 1933 she played for the SK Smíchov Bohemian handball. After she had to be hospitalized unconscious after a collision with an opponent in the game against Viktoria Žižkov, she gave up handball and devoted herself exclusively to table tennis.

In 1928 Marie Šmídová began playing table tennis with Viktoria Vinohrady. Just one year later she took part in a table tennis world championship for the first time as Marie Masáková in January 1929 . The only Czechoslovak starter defeated Marjorie Haydon, the mother of Ann Haydon-Jones , 3-1 and was eliminated in the second round against Magda Gál with the same result. In doubles with the German Ingeborg Carnatz , she was eliminated in the first round against the Hungarians Magda Gál / Ilona Zador with 0: 3. In mixed she failed after a bye in the 1st round together with Antonín Maleček in the 2nd round to the Hungarians Zoltán Mechlovits / Mária Mednyánszky . At the International English Championship, in which the dominating Hungarians and Austrians did not take part, she prevailed on April 26 and 27, 1929 against the players Moser, Sommerwill and Wood and defeated Winifred Land 3: 1 in the final. She also won mixed with Maleček.

Between 1928 and 1932, Šmídová was Czechoslovak national champion in women's singles five times in a row. During this time she defeated the unbeatable world champion Maria Mednyanszky three times with 3: 2, 3: 1 and 3: 0 at tournaments in Starý Smokovec and Piešťany . In 1930 she moved from Viktoria Vinohrady to Sparta Prague . At the 1930 World Cup in Berlin , Šmídová-Masáková first defeated Magda Gál and the German Bag Moser, before losing to the Austrian Josefine Kolbe in the quarter-finals . In doubles she and Astrid Krebsbach were eliminated in the quarterfinals against the Austrians Josefine Kolbe / Etta Neumann. In 1931 she won bronze in doubles with Mona Müller-Rüster at the World Championships in Budapest and was eliminated in the semifinals against the Hungarians Magda Gál / Lili Tiszai-Tenne with 2: 3. In the singles she lost to Magda Gál in the second round with 0: 3. Together with Bedřich Nikodém she was eliminated in the mixed with 1: 3 against the Hungarians Sándor Glancz / Magda Gál in the quarterfinals. At the 1932 World Championships in Smíchov, she was successful with three medals. In the singles she was defeated by the Hungarian Maria Mednyanszky in the semifinals with 1: 3. She won another bronze medal in mixed with Jaroslav Jílek. In doubles with Anna Braunová she defeated Anita Denker / Magda Gál 3-1 and lost in the final to Maria Mednyanszky / Anna Sipos 0-3.

After the women's team competition was held for the first time in 1934 with the Corbillon Cup, the Czechs Jožka Veselská, Marie Šmídová and Marie Kettnerová won bronze in their first year. In 1935, Marie Šmídová, Marie Kettnerová, Gertrude Kleinová won the cup at Wembley . In the same year she moved from Sparta to the Bohemians Prague . At the 1936 World Cup in Prague, Kettnerová, Kleinová, Šmídová and Votrubcová were able to win the Corbillon Cup again. As early as 1936, the Šmídová separated again from the Bohemians and joined SK Zaměstnanci města Prahy ( Sports Club for Municipal Employees in Prague ). From 1929 to 1936 Marie Šmídová took part in eight world championships and won 14 medals. After the unsuccessful 1937/1938 season, the Šmídová ended her active sports career in 1938. After that she only played in the hall of the U Menšíků inn .

In the ITTF world rankings she was ranked third in 1932.

On December 17, 1932, Marie Šmídová married the Prague insurance employee Ladislav Mika. He was also a musician and member of the tramp group Lišáci , which released the hit Holohlavý všetečka měl na Brdech dědečka in the 1950s . The marriage remained childless and was divorced again in 1937. Since 1938, Šmídová-Miková ran a children's shoe shop. After the Second World War, she and Jožka Veselská leased the U Menšíků restaurant in Nusle , where she occasionally played table tennis. She and her partner Jožka Veselská lived in a shared apartment not far from the restaurant. The last time he was seen in public was Šmídová as a guest at the 1963 World Table Tennis Championships . According to Veselská's nephew, she died of cancer in the mid-1960s.

Marie Šmídová-Miková has been increasingly forgotten since the late 1960s. When the book 80 let čs. stolního tenisu practically nothing was known about her life, not even her life data could be determined.

Results from the ITTF database

Association	event	year	place	country	singles	Double	Mixed	team
TCH	World Championship	1936	Prague	TCH	Semifinals	gold	Semifinals	1
TCH	World Championship	1935	Wembley	CLOSELY	Semifinals	silver	Quarter finals	1
TCH	World Championship	1934	Paris	FRA	Quarter finals	Semifinals	Semifinals	3
TCH	World Championship	1933	to bathe	AUT	Quarter finals	Agony	Quarter finals
TCH	World Championship	1932	Prague	TCH	Semifinals	silver	Semifinals
TCH	World Championship	1931	Budapest	HUN	Quarter finals	Semifinals	Quarter finals
TCH	World Championship	1930	Berlin	FRG	Quarter finals	Quarter finals	last 16
TCH	World Championship	1929	Budapest	HUN	last 16	last 16	last 16

Individual evidence

1. ↑ World rankings from 1928 to 1986 (accessed on October 31, 2011; PDF; 148 kB)
2. ↑ ITTF statistics (accessed on February 16, 2019)

Web links and source

• Neobyčejná kariéra Marie Schmiedtové-Šmídové-Masákové-Mikové (accessed on November 28, 2015) ( Memento from July 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
• Photo with the Czechoslovak women's team of the 1936 World Cup - Table Tennis Collector 32 page 8 (accessed October 31, 2011) (PDF; 7.1 MB)