Torleif Torkildsen won an Olympic bronze medal with the Norwegian team in gymnastics in the all-around Swedish system team event at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. About 10 years later, he became an excellent tennis player. He won five consecutive titles in the men’s singles at the Norwegian National Championships from 1926-30. He added another three championships in the men’s doubles (1925, 1926, 1928) and one in the mixed doubles (1929). Torkildsen won another five titles indoors, two in the men’s singles (1928, 1932) and three in the men’s doubles (1931, 1933, 1934). Internationally, he played 10 matches for Norway in the Davis Cup between 1928 and 1932; however, he won only one of them.
His father was an Army captain and lawyer. Torleif followed in his footsteps serving in the Army for some years and then attending law school. In 1919, he married Magda Dortea Angell; the couple had a daughter. After their divorce, he remarried in 1935 to Emeny Eugenie Syversen Jerpsette.
Norway