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“IT was,” says Donald Parker, “one of the greatest upsets in the history of any sport – absolutely unbelievable.”
According to Parker, who was an England coach from 1980 until 1997, the odds on Hilton triumphing at the 1980 European Men's Table Tennis Championships would have been about 1,000/1.
Hilton duly defeated the cream of Europe – and it is no exaggeration to say table tennis was never the same again.
To this day, Hilton maintains the circumstances which surrounded this most unlikely of triumphs were touched by fate. “It was destiny, I’m absolutely convinced of that,” he says.
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He is now approaching 60 and remains among England’s top 30 or so players – a position he has kept for more than three decades.
Yet at the age of 23 (ten years prior to his European Championship triumph), Hilton was simply a local league player. That all changed when he made the decision to travel around Australia.
“The plan was to go all around the country,” he says, “but my friend met someone and settled down with her near Perth. I went there and joined a table tennis club where a group of Malaysians played. “I walked in and asked them for a game, but they just looked at me. They said they practiced during the week and only played matches at weekends. Meeting them taught me how to train.”
While in Australia, Hilton met another person who would change his career. “There was a guy called Paul Pinkowich who was the number one in Australia and he had been to Japan and came back with some anti-loop rubber. I began using it and became the first player to attack and not just defend with it.”
It was a time when there was no rule stating that all table tennis bats must have black and red rubbers on either side. The difficulty of playing against combination bats, therefore, was magnified without clearly being able to see which rubber an opponent had used. |
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Hilton was not the only player to use anti-loop or long pimples at the time (the Chinese first used long pimples at the 1977 World Championships) but, using black rubber on both sides, he adapted his style quite brilliantly. “His technique with the anti-spin was superb,” remembers Parker. “He could actually hit a topspin with it, but then he would throw the ball up with no spin at all. He could also play both of these shots with the reverse. With the same action, he could play shots which had completely different spins. He also had the courage to take risks.”
Hilton returned to England from Australia and gradually moved up the national rankings. With Jill Hammersley-Parker winning the European Women’s Singles in 1976 and Desmond Douglas challenging the top players in the world, English table tennis was in good health and the team travelled to Berne in Switzerland for the 1980 European Championships with optimism.
“I was the third or fourth team member and Des was really our best hope in the singles,” remembers Hilton, “but I was in decent form. I was 33 at the time and probably at my peak.”
Hilton performed well to reach the quarter-finals, but his tournament was expected to come to an end against the top Hungarian player Gabor Gergely. But, with Parker coaching him, he squeezed through in the decisive set 3-2.
In the semi-finals, Hilton faced the French champion Jacques Secretin, who previously had been European champion in 1976. Secretin struggled with Hilton’s unorthodox style and the Englishman was through to the final. |
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In the other half of the draw, Czechoslovakia’s Josef Dvoracek had defeated Douglas in the quarter-finals and was then facing the Swede Stellan Bengtsson.
“If I had played Des, Bengtsson or [Tibor] Klampar I would have had no chance,” says Hilton, “but Dvoracek didn’t like my style and, I remember when he got through to the final, I thought to myself, ‘you must win’. It was strange, even though nothing was expected of me, I wouldn’t have been happy to have lost in the final. I knew that if I played properly I would beat him.”
Hilton duly demolished Dvoracek 3-0 and he remains the only Englishman to lift a singles title at world or European level since Johnny Leach in 1951. A curious twist was that Hilton befriended a former American table tennis champion by the name of Erwin Klein during the competition.
Klein had travelled to Switzerland to watch the tournament and began encouraging Hilton. “I would go and sit with him and talk,” says Hilton, “and he gradually guided me into thinking there was no reason why I couldn’t win.”
Inexplicably though, after Hilton was crowned champion, Klein wouldn’t speak to him, simply saying, “I’ve done my job for you”.
Klein was shot dead in 1992 and, although Hilton has a photo of his brief mentor, he says he never did get the chance to properly thank him for his words of advice.
Parker, though, remembers how well Hilton handled the pressure of reaching the latter stages of such a major competition. “The way he handled the situation was magnificent,” says Parker, “he was not fazed at all against these great players. We used to play winner stays on at Manchester YMCA with two tables. If you lost you went to the back of the queue and I’d seen John get more animated in matches at the YMCA than he was when he won the European Championships”.
“It was a fantastic achievement, people mention the bat but you have to give him huge credit. He was an innovator, he experimented with different things and developed a technique that no one else had. He had a good draw for him but he took advantage of it.” |
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John Hilton receiving the European Men's Singles Trophy |
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Hilton remained a top international player for several more years, appearing with some success in Germany and Holland before retiring from England duty in 1984 to make way for younger players.
By then, as a direct result of Hilton’s European triumph, the International Table Tennis Federation had ruled that all players must use different coloured rubbers on either side of their bat.
Hilton agreed with the rule change. “I was saying they should change it for a few years,” he says, “but it would have been crazy for me not to try and take advantage of the rules. I would say the same now about glue and this Neubauer rubber – I think they should be banned. But, if it’s in the rules and it helps, I would recommend people to use what they can.” |
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Hilton is now virtually a full-time coach, but remains among the best players in the country. He is still physically extremely fit and practices several times a week. He now plays with short and long pimples, predominantly defending and still twiddling to great effect.
He never did become English champion – losing on numerous occasions to Douglas – but his success in Switzerland in 1980 has never been bettered since by an English table tennis player.
Indeed, the name John Hilton will forever sit on an elite list in European men’s table tennis alongside the likes of Waldner, Persson, Appelgren, Samsonov, Boll, Secretin, Bengtsson, Surbek, Johansson and Berczik.
He thinks back to his trip to Australia in 1970 and laughs. “If my friend hadn’t met that girl, I would never have stayed near Perth and got into table tennis in the way that I did,” he says. “I’d have travelled around Australia and I’d probably have got into drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Who knows what would have happened. Maybe I’d be dead by now – either that or a millionaire…” |
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