Csaba Elthes

Elthes died of a stroke in 1995 when visiting his home city of Budapest. He was survived by his second wife, Baba, who resides in New York.

His passion for fencing and competition never wavered; in 1994, he convinced Peter Westbrook to train for and participate in the 1995 Pan American Games, where Westbrook won a gold medal at the age of 42.

In 1981, his student Michael Lofton becomes US Junior Olympic sabre champion, beginning a very successful career as one of the United States' top fencers.

In 1980, the United States boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow. Elthes and the US Fencing team instead went on a state department sponsored trip to China, spending 3 weeks traveling through 4 different provinces competing against China's top teams. Later that year, Elthes suffered a stroke, paralyzing his right hand, but he learned to teach with his left until he had recovered some use of the right, and switched hands as needed for the rest of his career.

Elthes was inducted into the USFA Hall of Fame in 1978.

Peter Westbrook quit working with Elthes after three months in 1972, unwilling to tolerate the maestro's teaching style. The following year, Westbrook began working with Elthes again, and Elthes no longer struck him, coaching him to his first of 13 US National Sabre titles in 1974.

Personal courage and disregard for discomfort were also part of the formula; for very advanced students, Elthes sometimes gave lessons without a mask, and nearly all serious students were disciplined by being hit with a sabre, sometimes hard enough to draw blood; Danny Bukantz' son Jeff, a student from the 1970s, notes "I think I may have been the only student that Csaba didn't hit. I always thought it might have been because my father was his dentist".

For at least three years (1968-1971) he was the fencing coach at Pace University.

Elthes and Santelli were largely (but not solely) responsible for making the New York City area the center of US sabre fencing for most of their careers; Elthes was a US Olympic coach from 1964 to 1984, and as late as 1992, the entire US Olympic sabre team was based at NYC salles and clubs. Elthes generally gave lessons both at the Fencers Club and at the New York Athletic Club.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Elthes earned a degree in law from University of Budapest in 1936. In 1956, political turmoil in Hungary caused him to leave his wife and two daughters and flee to the west via the Brücke von Andau. He arrived in the United States and was detained for sixty days.

Maestro Csaba Elthes (March 10, 1912 – November 8, 1995) was a fencing master who emigrated to the U.S. Elthes trained many Olympic competitors in the 1960s through 1980s, including the only U.S. Olympic fencing medalist of the period, Peter Westbrook (bronze medal in 1984).