Viktor Barna

Viktor Gyozo Barna (Braun) (born August 24, 1911, in Budapest, Hungary; died February 27, 1972) was a Hungarian table tennis player. Barna's birth name was Győző Brown, but because of anti-Semitism in Hungary at the time he changed his name to a Hungarian sounding name.

Barna won 32 World Championship medals, among them 23 gold, 6 silver, and 3 bronze. His championships include five singles events, eight doubles, three mixed-doubles, and seven team titles.

He was described by Sir Ivor Montagu, president of the International Table Tennis Federation (1926-67), as "the greatest table tennis player who ever lived."

Table tennis career
In 1927 he was crowned Hungarian national junior champion.

In 1929, Barna was a member of the Hungarian National Team that won the Swaythling Cup, the award presented in recognition of the Men"s World Team Table Tennis Championship. One year later, he won the first of his five World Singles Championships.

Barna’s greatest performance came in February 1935 at the World Championships in Wembley, England. He captured the World Singles, the Doubles with Miklos Szabados, and Mixed-Doubles with Anna Sipos. Later that year, his Hungarian Team was again awarded the Swaythling Cup.

In May 1935, Barna's championship singles career was effectively ended when his right playing arm was broken and severely injured in an auto accident in France. A platinum plate was inserted in his forearm. He nonetheless managed to win the World Doubles title with England's Richard Bergmann in 1939.

All of Barna's Double crowns, 1929-35, and 1939, were won with Miklos Szabados as his playing partner, with the exceptions of his teaming with Sandor Glanz in 1933 and Bergmann in 1939.

In September 1939, during the outbreak of the Second World War, and his wife were in America. Barna returned to Europe, in order to fight against the Nazis. He joined the British army as a parachutist, and fought in Yugoslavia. After the British withdrew from Yugoslavia, Barna remained in England. After the war he settled with his wife in London. He became a British national in 1952. Later he became a representative for the Dunlop Sports Company and continued travelling the world in this capacity. It was during one of these tours in 1972 that he succumbed to a heart attack in Lima, Peru.

Writing
In 1962 he published the book Table Tennis Today (London: Arthur Barker) and in 1971 Your Book of Table Tennis ISBN 9780571093458.

Halls of fame
Barna, who was Jewish, was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981.