EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVERS - 1 Karoly Takacs

         Every Olympic gold medalist is special, intensively trained and they are arguably the world's best in their respective sport. They command respect and inspire a generation. The pain they take to honour their country makes them legends.

       There are few who are the legend of legends, the greatest of greatest.......... the KING of Kings.

       Karoly Takacs is one such person.

          Karoly Takacs was a sergeant in the Hungarian army. He had won most major national and international championships. The 28 year old shooter is the hot favourite to win gold in 1940 Tokyo Olympics.

           But disaster struck.

            At an army training session, a hand grenade accidentally exploded and blew away Karoly's right hand, his shooting hand. Karoly lost his limb. A hand that would have earned him an Olympic gold medal, that could have turned him a hero for his hard work in the past years is lost.

           An irreplaceable damage . A lost that cannot be compensated.

          If he had been a mediocre, he would have brooded over his fate, wallowed in self-pity and might have lost his entire life thinking of what he had lost.

          But Karoly was made of sterner stuff. Winners never worry about what they have lost, winners focus on what they still have.  Karoly thought like a winner.

           After a month in hospital, Karoly went away from the glare of the world. He lost his right hand but he had a strong, willing mind and a left hand. He trained, trained hard and made his left hand, a shooting hand equivalent to his right hand.

           Think how difficult this transformation would have been. Just use the mouse in your left hand, brush or try to type a message  using your left hand to understand the difficulty of training the alternate hand. The bull's eye is just the size of full stop. Yes the very size of a (.) full stop !! And Karoly got the target with his left hand. 

           He made his left hand the best shooting hand in the world.

Winning is less about skills, more about attitude.

           Karoly Takacs won the gold medal at the 1948 Olympics in London. He did not stop with that because winners do not limit themselves.

             

              Karoly Takacs won a second gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, again using his left hand

Karoly Takacs is one of my inspiration. Prakash Iyer (@prakashiyer )introduced Karoly Takacs to me in his book  The Habit of Winning .