Mária Szolnoki

Mária Szolnoki was born in Budapest on 16 June 1947 and grew up in the city's Zugló district, where she attended the primary school on Dózsa György út. Her father was a paediatrician, and her parents raised three children.

She began fencing in 1958 at the BVSC club, encouraged by her older sister Judit, and spent two years learning the basics from the coach Árpád Nagy. In 1960 she moved to Budapesti Honvéd, where she worked with József Polgár, Lajos Maszlay and Bertalan Papp.

In 1965, already a member of the junior national team, Szolnoki transferred to Újpesti Dózsa. Because of the transfer she was not allowed to compete for a year. From 1965 until the end of her career her coach was Lajos Somodi Sr. In 1967 she won the individual bronze medal at the junior world championships in Tehran.

She was a member of the Hungarian senior team from 1969 to 1978. In 1969 she was part of the women's foil team that won bronze at the world championships, and in 1970 the team finished fourth. At the 1971 world championships in Vienna she won team silver and finished fifth in the individual event.

Her greatest success came at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where she fenced in both the individual and team foil events. The Hungarian team, with Ildikó Rejtő, Ildikó Bóbis, Ildikó Tordasi, Ildikó Matuscsák and Szolnoki, beat France 9 to 7 and Italy 9 to 6 before losing the final to the Soviet Union, and took the silver medal.

A year later, in 1973, the Hungarian women's foil team became world champions in Gothenburg. The team won silver medals again at the world championships of 1974 and 1975, and in 1974 Szolnoki also reached the individual final, finishing fourth. At home she won ten national team championships with Dózsa and the individual national title in 1977, a total of eleven Hungarian championship titles.

She retired from the national team in 1979. Having graduated as a business economist in 1969, she earned a specialist coaching diploma from the College of Physical Education (TF) in 1980 and went on to coach at Újpesti Dózsa, with the Hungarian junior national team and finally at Vasas.

Szolnoki was known to everyone in Hungarian fencing as Mári. She kept in touch all her life with her former teammates, who were also her friends, and they celebrated her 75th birthday together in 2022. In 2025 the Olympic and world champion fencer Máté Koch visited her, and the two talked at length about the sport.

Mária Szolnoki suffered a stroke over the weekend of 17 and 18 October 2026 and died on Monday 19 October 2026, aged 79, according to the Hungarian Fencing Federation's notice, which drew on the Hungarian fencing museum. Her family informed the Hungarian Olympic Committee, whose first notice gave the date of death as 16 October before it was updated to 19 October.

The Hungarian Olympic Committee expressed its sympathy to her family and the fencing community, and the federation said it would always preserve her memory. The news was reported by Hungarian media including Index, 24.hu and Blikk. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Szolnoki belonged to the strong generation of Hungarian women foil fencers of the late 1960s and 1970s, who won Olympic silver in Munich and the world team title in 1973 and stood on the world championship podium year after year. After her own career she passed on what she had learned from Lajos Somodi Sr. to new generations of fencers as a coach at Újpesti Dózsa, Vasas and with the junior national team.