101102 | GREAT BRITAIN & GERMANY. Hilde Sperling silver Wimbledon Award Medal.

101102 | GREAT BRITAIN & GERMANY. Hilde (Krahwinkel) Sperling silver Award Medal. Engraved and awarded in 1930 for the mixed doubles runners-up at the Wimbledon Championships (37mm, 12h). By Fattorini & Sons.

 

Athena, representing the virtues of athletic competition, kneeling left before tennis net, holding crowning Nike on globus and wrapping laurel wreath around the earth / THE LAWN TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS, • 1930 • / MIXED DOUBLES / RUNNERS–UP / D. PRENN, / FRL • H. KRAHWINKEL engraved in five lines.

 

Graded PCGS SP63 Matte. Deeply toned, with some subtle brilliance. For cert verification, please follow this link. An incredibly attractive and interesting medal from one of Germany's greatest female tennis players, second only to Steffi Graf.

 

Likely among the top three female tennis players of the interwar period—along with Helen (Wills) Moody and Suzanne Lenglen—Hilde (Krahwinkel) Sperling was born in Essen, Germany in 1908. During the decade of the 1930's, she was consistently ranked among the top ten, amassing Grand Slam singles victories at the French Open (1935–1937) and a mixed doubles victory at Wimbledon (1933). In her three-peat at Roland Garros, she became the second of just four women to ever perform such a feat, the others being the aforementioned (Wills) Moody along with Monica Seles and Justine Henin. She also had numerous runner-up performances at the Slams, one of which was the event commemorated on this prize medal, where she paired with fellow German Daniel Prenn in their loss to Elizabeth Ryan (United States) and Jack Crawford (Australia) at the Wimbledon mixed doubles championship in 1930. She married Dane Svend Sperling in December 1933 and was inducted posthumously into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013, having passed away in 1981.

 

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