Obituary: Helen Hamilton, table tennis champion

In 1949, the then Helen Elliot ventured to Stockholm and returned a table tennis world champion – a mammoth achievement for a player who had only picked up a bat for the first time less than a decade before. It was far from the last title she would secure in a distinguished career. And right up to her latter years, when she required her Zimmer frame to get from A to B, she was still a vital figure in the sport in Scotland, sharing a life’s experience to generations far removed from her heyday.

It had appeared, at one point, the most unlikely career. One of three sisters from a humble home in Edinburgh, Elliot shook off childhood illness to combine a keen love of tennis with running and cycling, but it was during the Second World War, while cooped up in an air raid shelter, that she found herself captivated by ping-pong.

That enthusiasm never relented. When her father was killed in an accident in the Middle East in 1943, she was forced to leave school and take up a job as a medical secretary at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

When her duties there were done, she would perfect her other craft with surgical precision, having joined the Gambit Club in her home city.

Three years later, she won her first Scottish Open crown. It would be 14 years before anyone would wrestle it from her grasp. The early part of her ascendancy also saw the Irish Open captured, and in 1947 she went to the world championships for the first time in Paris, reaching the singles quarter-finals, matching that result 12 months later when the tournament was held at Wembley.

However, it was in the doubles event where she experienced her finest hours. She was partnered in London by Englishwoman Dora Begeri, and the two battled all the way to the final, only to come up short against their compatriots Mrs V Thomas and Miss M Frank. It would only serve to spur Elliot on.

Teaming up with Hungarian Gizelle Fargas at the subsequent world championships in 1949, she became the first Scot ever to claim one of table tennis’s major titles. A year later, reunited with Begeri, she retained the prize while advancing to the last eight of the individual event for the fourth successive time.

She would reach the women’s doubles semi-finals again in Bombay in 1952 and the final of the mixed doubles in Utrecht in 1955.

There were other notable triumphs on the nascent circuit, with singles titles in the Welsh, German and Belgium Opens as well as doubles triumphs elsewhere. In an era when the English Open was second only in importance to the world championships, she won the singles in 1949, 1950 and 1958, the women’s doubles in 1950 and 1953, and the mixed competition in 1950 with Victor Barna, and 1953 with Aubrey Simons.

Elliot also added nine Scottish women’s doubles titles: four with Helen Houliston, and four mixed, three of which came with her long-time playing partner Bert Kerr. She teamed up with Angelica Rozeaniu to win the gold medal at the 1955 World University Games in Warsaw, while claiming silver in the singles.

Her labour was more for love than profit. Elliot found another diversion after meeting her first husband Bob Dykes, the secretary of the Scottish Table Tennis Association. But in 1961 – when their only child, a daughter, was still an infant – Dykes died. Two years later she married Charles Hamilton, but although they never divorced, she later told friends after the couple separated that it had been an unhappy relationship.

Then known as Helen Hamilton, she continued to compete on occasion, and was persuaded, at the age of 44, to end her formal retirement and represent Scotland at the inaugural Commonwealth Championships in Singapore. It was a measure of her talent that she advanced to the quarter-finals of the doubles, but it was her final impression on the international stage.

Moving to Perthshire to run a hotel, she maintained close links with table tennis, serving as honorary president of the Scottish Association and standing twice, unsuccessfully, for the presidency of the Commonwealth Federation.

She was regularly to be found advising young prospects on the psychological approach to the sport and was a regular attendee at tournaments until affected by dementia in her final years.

In 2003, Hamilton was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame, donating most of her trophies to the National Museum archive. Last year, when filling in the paperwork to move into a residential home in Perth, she was asked about her finest achievement. “Playing for my country,” she wrote.

She is survived by her only daughter, Suzie.

MARK WOODS