He is the third known physically disabled athlete to have competed in the Olympic Games after George Eyser in 1904 and Olivér Halassy in 1928, followed by Liz Hartel in 1952, Neroli Fairhall in 1984 and Oscar Pistorius in 2012.

By 1936, he was a world-class pistol shooter, but he was denied a place in the Hungarian shooting team for the 1936 Summer Olympics on the grounds that he was a sergeant, and only commissioned officers were allowed to compete.

This prohibition was lifted in Hungary after the Berlin Games, and Takács had expectations of success at the 1940 Summer Olympics, scheduled to be held in Tokyo.

He practiced in secret, surprising his countrymen when he won the Hungarian national pistol shooting championship in the spring of 1939.

He trained Hungarian Szilárd Kun, who won the silver medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics.