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Hungarian Olympic shooter Karoly Takacs

Hands up if you've heard of .

The Hungarian is a legend within his own country after winning successive shooting gold medals at the 1948 and 52 Olympics, but relatively unknown outside its borders.

His story has to be one of the most inspirational of all Olympians.

His Olympic journey started when he was in the Hungarian army. Takacs was the top pistol shooter in the world and preparing for the 1940 Games which were due to be held in Tokyo.

But disaster struck when a grenade exploded in his right hand during an army traning exercise and blew it off. It was his shooting hand and many thought his career would be over.

Not Takacs though - behind closed doors he relentlessly trained himself to shoot left-handed before turning up at the Hungarian National Pistol Shooting Championships in early 1939.

Other shooters approached him to offer their condolences, believing he had only come along to watch, but Takacs not only competed, he won.

The intervention of World War II meant the 1940 and 44 Games were cancelled, but he did qualify for the first post-War Olympics in 1948.

Takacs was 38 when he arrived in London and walked away with gold. He repeated the feat four years later in Helsinki to cap a truly remarkable sporting career.

Britain's greatest Olympic shooter was, arguably, who became the first man to win gold medals in the three-position small bore rifle at consecutive Olympics in 1984 and 88.

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Richard Faulds will be going to his fourth Olympics and is among the favourites to join Cooper as a double gold medallist after winning in Sydney eight years ago.

How do you think the British shooting team will fare in Beijing next month?

Peter Scrivener is a 麻豆官网首页入口 Sport Journalist. Our should answer any questions you have.


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