Hungarian
wrestling champion Karoly Karpati performed in three Olympic
Games, winning a gold medal in 1936
in the Lightweight Freestyle class. The
Jewish wrestler ’s victory in Berlin
provided special significance, because
it came at the expense of Germany’s
vaunted titleholder, Wolfgang Ehrl.
Karpati won a silver medal in the
Lightweight Freestyle class at the 1932
Los Angeles Olympics. In 1928 at the
Amsterdam Games, he finished fourth
in the same weight class.
Karpati was Hungary’s first “freestyle” wrestler,
winning his first Hungarian National Junior title in 1925.
He
went on to win ten Hungarian National
Championships, as well as European
Lightweight wrestling crowns in 1927,
1929, 1930, and 1935. He also won one
silver and two bronze medals in European Championships
competitions during
the years in between.
Karpati was a Hungarian wrestling
master trainer-coach and Olympics
coach for many years. He authored six
books on the sport of wrestling.
The Hungarian champion listed
among his hobbies Einstein’s Theory
of Relativity.
In 1982, International Olympic
Committee President Juan Antonio
Samaranch presented the bronze medal
of the Olympic Order to Karpati for his
lifelong work with youth in sports education.
Karpati survived imprisonment in
a Nazi labor camp in the Ukraine during
World War II.
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