Georgina Póta
Quick Facts
Biography
Georgina Póta (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈɡɛorɡinɒ ˈpoːtɒ]; born 13 January 1985 in Budapest) is a multiple European Champion table tennis player from Hungary.
Career
Póta was born in the Hungarian capital Budapest in 1985 and began practicing table tennis in 1990. Between 1994 and 2008 she played for Statisztika PSC in Hungary, subsequently she moved to TTC Berlin Eastside.
For 1998 she already played in the Hungarian Top 12 and also participated at the Table Tennis European Youth Championships in Norcia, Italy, where she finished runner-up in the Girls' Cadet Doubles with Ildikó Csernyik. A year later she celebrated her first European Championship title after winning the Cadet Mixed Doubles event on the side of Dániel Zwickl. This was followed by other medals in the coming years, including three golds in the Junior category (women's doubles, team – 2001, Terni; women's singles – 2002, Moscow).
Her first major senior success came in 2007, when she won gold medal in the team competition at the Table Tennis European Championships in Belgrade. Additionally, she collected a silver medal in women's doubles and a bronze medal in mixed doubles. In the next year she won another gold at the 2008 Table Tennis European Championships, this time in doubles with Krisztina Tóth. In the team event she came second with Hungary.
She also competed at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where she was knocked out in the third round by Wang Nan of China who later managed to win the silver medal. Four years later at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London she was given bye in the first round due to her seeding and entered the competition in the second round against Tian Yuan. She beat her Croatian opponent 4–1, just to fell short against Park Mi-young with the same scorline in the best of 32.
In 2014 she won both the German national cup and championship with TTC Berlin Eastside and also went triumphant in the ETTU Champions League.
Awards
- Hungarian Table Tennis Player of the Year: 2004, 2012, 2013
- Junior Prima Award: 2007