Senior Spotlight Octogenarian Is Table-Tennis Champ
As a young woman in Austria, Lisa Modlich joined the French Resistance during World War II. Now, in her 80s, she’s using the same ferociousness to face down opponents across Ping-Pong tables around the world – and winning. Click here to view article.
As a young woman in Austria, Lisa Modlich joined the French Resistance during World War II and taught the Jews she knew to ski so they could escape the Nazis by crossing the Austrian border into Switzerland. Perhaps the grit she showed then is what helps her now to win table-tennis championships in her 80s.
The Houston woman has won 115 gold medals and 20 silver on the international, senior table-tennis circuit. In the 2010 World Veterans Table Tennis World Championships, where she competed for the first time in the over-80 bracket, she bested her competitors—notable in a field that is largely dominated by Europe and Asia.
After she won her first gold medal in the 1992 Houston Senior Olympics, “I got greedy and I wanted more,” she told Next Avenue. She went on to claim national titles and thrives on the competition. “You get a high after you play,” she says. “I don’t drink, but I think it’s almost like being drunk when you win a medal.”
Modlich was one of seven subjects for the documentary, Ping Pong, produced and directed by British brothers Hugh and Anson Hartford, who followed the international players to China for the championship.
During the war, Modlich escaped to Paris, then moved to Houston, where she worked as a translator for the United Nations. In fact, when Modlich competed for the world title of the 2010 championships held in China’s Inner Mongolia region, she learned conversational Chinese, adding to the five languages in which she is fluent.
Her current husband, Joachim, is a competitive sharpshooter who is 25 years her junior; they have been married 45 years. He is “a very good table-tennis player as well,” she says. “Once in a while he can beat me, but he’s a little younger.”
Before taking up Ping-Pong, Modlich was an avid tennis player. But at age 66, the retired legal secretary decided it was just too hot. “I gave up tennis up for a sport I could play indoors with air conditioning.”
She believes she has an innate talent for the game. “There’s a certain connection between eyes and elbow that you’re born with,” she says. “People can play 50 years and not win anything. The connection has to be there. You can learn how to play and how to hold the racquet, but the reaction to the ball is inborn. It doesn’t change with age. The muscles get slower, not your reaction.”
Practicing two to three hours a day, Modlich doesn’t understand why other Americans don’t do more physical activity. “Don’t get stuck behind the television, that’s all there is to it,” she told Next Avenue. Instead of watching television, get up and take up some sort of sport where you have to move—a fast sport like table tennis—and keep it up as long as you can.”
Sources
“Meet America’s 88-Year-Old World Table Tennis Champ,” September 4, 2013, Next Avenue
“Competitive table tennis champs like Lisa Modlich seem not to age,” September 9, 2013, Houston Chronicle
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