Károly Takács: Switching Hands

Károly Takács of Hungary overcame great adversity to win back-to-back Olympic titles in rapid-fire pistol shooting. The European champion and a member of the Hungarian world-championship team in 1938, Takács was ready to make his mark in the 1940 Olympics, which his team was expected to dominate. War and a tragic accident in 1938, however, put Takács’s Olympic dreams on hold.

At age 28, Takács, a sergeant in the Hungarian army, was severely injured while practicing maneuvers with his squad—a grenade with a defective pin blew up before Takács could throw it. His right hand, which was his shooting hand, was horribly maimed, and he spent a month in the hospital. Determined not to let his injury change him, Takács taught himself to shoot left-handed. By 1939 he was back in top form. He won the Hungarian pistol-shooting championship and was allowed to stay in the army due to his shooting fame. Takács was promoted to captain, but his Olympic hopes faded as World War II raged on and caused the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games.

After the war Takács returned to competition as a left-handed shooter and earned a spot on his country’s team at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. He was 38 years old when he finally had his shot at Olympic glory. Argentina’s Carlos Valiente, the 1947 world champion, was the favorite to win the title—but it was Takács who was golden. He scored a world-record 580 points to become the Olympic champion, while Valiente compiled 571 points in his second-place effort. Four years later, Takács again rose to the top when he won his second Olympic gold medal at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland. This time Takács notched 579 points, slipping by silver medalist Szilárd Kun, who recorded 578. At age 46, Takács made one more Olympic appearance in the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia, where he finished eighth.