Waldemar Fritsch passed away on 15th May 2008 at the age of eighty-five at his home town Bregenz. The Austrian shocked the table tennis world on the occasion of the World Championships in Vienna 1951.Fritsch remained unbeaten in the team event by using his revolutionary three millimetres thick black sponge.
Milestone in the History of Table Tennis
In Zdenko Uzorinac’s book Table Tennis Legends, Waldemar Fritsch described the genesis of the sponge as follows. “Sometime in early 1951 one of my fellow players in our table tennis club, who had been taken prisoner by the Americans, gave me a racket with very worn-out rubber. At the time you couldn’t buy new rubber linings. By chance, completely by chance, I remembered seeing a sponge-like material in the basement, so I cut it, patterned it to match the racket, glued it on the wood and tried to play with it. I hit the ball as strongly as I could and was amazed – the ball flew away noiselessly as if catapulted!”
A Multi-Talent at Sports
Waldemar Fritsch had an academic degree of political science and was a successful business man. He kept on playing for his club in the Austrian table tennis top division until the age of sixty.Dr. Fritsch was not only an excellent offensive table tennis player but a highly gifted athlete competing also in swimming athletics, gymnastics, handball, skiing and football.
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