Three World Championships medals, a three-time European champion, multiple English Open champion and World No 6 – Mary Wright is truly one of English table tennis’ all-time greats.
Those and other triumphs are discussed in the latest big-name interview as we continue our countdown to the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals in London.
Joining Mary for the interview is her husband Brian, himself an England international who competed at multiple World and European Championships.
They talk about their experiences representing England, juggling their working and playing lives, supporting each other and, later, their family life after Mary’s retirement from playing at the age of 26.
The three Worlds medals are the biggest highlights, as Mary talks about winning Women’s Doubles silver with Diane Rowe in 1963, her unbeaten campaign in the Women’s team bronze medal-winning squad of 1965, and the Mixed Doubles bronze with Denis Neale in 1969.
Of that first one in in 1963 in Prague, when Mary was just 19 years old, she said: “We did have a chance in the final, but I think perhaps if I’d had a little bit more experience, we could have won it. But to get to the final was more than I would have expected.”
It was then back to the day job – Mary was a trainee radiographer at Lambeth Hospital – and she said her colleagues did not appreciate the scale of what she had achieved.
“I didn’t get free time off, I had to either lose money, which we couldn’t afford to do, or take holiday,” she said.
“And when I got back, funnily enough, the people I worked with said ‘oh, did you have a nice holiday?’
“Well, I don’t think it was a holiday, but they didn’t understand sport and they didn’t understand what I’d actually done. I just said ‘yes, it was fine’. What else can you say?”
There is gold to talk about as well – two European Women’s Doubles titles in 1962 and 1964, as well as Women’s Team gold in the latter year.
Mary said of 1964: “I think that was one of the highlights of my career. It was a wonderful trip to Malmo, a lot of people there. We had quite a lot of Press there from England.
“We retained our doubles title, which was fantastic and then the team, well I think I was unbeaten in the team and we won.
“And it’s euphoria. Brian was there, everybody was celebrating, it was amazing.”
That was also Brian’s first major championships, and he tells of being part of the young English team, alongside Chester Barnes and Denis Neale, which beat hosts Sweden.
“That was probably the greatest match I’ve ever been involved in,” he said. “I was 21 I think, or 22, Dennis was 19, Chester was 17 and we went and beat them in Malmo in front of their own supporters.
“We were thrilled to put our tracksuits back on with England on the back. It was just a brilliant to be involved with them and with Johnny Leach, former world champion, as our captain.”
Mary’s multiple English Open golds, six National Women’s Singles titles and a place in the Table Tennis England Centenary Hall of Fame are also all on the agenda.
On that Hall of Fame induction, Mary said: “I was absolutely gobsmacked, to be honest. I was sitting there listening because all the people before me weren’t there or had died, and then suddenly, listening to what they were saying and I’m thinking ‘hang on, that’s me!’ I had no idea at all – I was just gobsmacked, the whole thing.”