Athlete of the Week – Table tennis player Bernadette Szőcs
Szőcs had an impressive run at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar
Florin Orban, 27.05.2025, 13:45
Players from eastern Asia have been dominating table tennis for decades. For this reason, a medal grabbed by European players at the World Championships is a rare achievement. Such a result was achieved by Bernadette Szőcs, Romania’s best table tennis player at present and one of Europe’s top performers. Alongside Austrian athlete of Moldovan origin Sofia Polcanova, Bernadette managed to reach the doubles final of the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, where she won the silver medal, which is why we have designated her Athlete of the Week on RRI.
In Qatar, Bernadette competed in the singles, the doubles and the mixed doubles. In the women’s singles, she reached the round of 16, where she lost to the second seed, China’s Wang Manyu. In the mixed doubles, Szőcs played alongside Eduard Ionescu and did not make it past the first round. In the women’s doubles, the Romanian had an epic performance. After a first victory in the second half of the draw against a pair from Kenya, a Mexican couple followed, which Bernadette and Sofia, seeded 10th in the competition, ousted easily. In the third round, they took on the Czech-Slovak pair Hana Matelova / Barbora Balážová, seeded eighth, whom they defeated 3-2. In the quarterfinals, they knocked out the German pair Sabine Winter / Yuan Wan 3-1, and in the semifinals they defeated the South Korean pair Shin Yu-bin / Ryu Han-na 3-2. In the final, however, the Romanian-Austrian pair was defeated by the second-seeded pair, made up of Wang Manyu and Kuay Man of China, final score 3-0. Bernadette thus brought Romania’s first medal at the individual World Championships after a 32-year break. The last medal was the bronze won by Otilia Bădescu in the women’s singles, in Sweden, in Gothenburg, in 1993.
Bernadette Szőcs was born March 5, 1995, in Târgu Mureş (central Romania). She took up sports at the age of 8. The first results in cadet and junior competitions came relatively quickly. Bernadette won several medals in European and world competitions, quickly climbing the international rankings. In 2016, at the European Championships in Budapest, she won bronze in the mixed doubles, alongside Ovidiu Ionescu. A year later, at the European championships in Luxembourg, she won her first European trophy, with the Romanian team. In 2018, in Montreux, Switzerland, she won the European Top 16 tournament, a competition addressing the best players in Europe. A year later, in Nantes, France, she became European champion again with the Romanian team. In Munich, in 2022, she won the European title in women’s doubles, together with Sofia Polcanova, and won silver in mixed doubles, together with Ovidiu Ionescu. At the Paris Olympics last year, in the singles competition, she reached the round of 16, losing to Polcanova. In the mixed doubles, she ranked 5 together with Ovidiu Ionescu. (VP)
