Quality rather than quantity

08 Octobre 2015

Only 5 players who live in Switzerland travelled to Malta for the first ever tournament on this beautiful Mediterranean island. The organisers did a great job with the tournament at the Marsa Sports Club and so did the few players from Switzerland.

The Swiss/French Cédric Junillon is successfully back after an injury break and won gold in the Men’s Doubles together with Jesper Ratzer the reigning World champion from Denmark. Junillon also clearly took profit of his doubles victory and reached his first ever world tour final in the Men’s Elite.

Nicole Eisler also reached the final in the Mixed Doubles together with Ray Jordan from England. They lost closely to the Swedish couple. Eisler completed her medal collection with 2 more medals winning the bronze medal match in the Women’s Elite Singles and Women’s Elite Doubles with Kirsten Kaptein (NL).

Another gold medal was won by Astrid Kern. The German squash player who lives in Switzerland was clearly too good for the Women’s B draw.

New in the Racketlon scene, Fabius Bernet had to face the experience with the gummiarm right in his first round. Unfortunately, he lost that final point but won his next match.

Unfortunate was also Graham King. He had to give up during his first match due to his shoulder injury, which is not yet fully recovered. All the best and get well soon!

Apart from that the tournament was great throughout, and this was backed up by an excellent selection of extras and nice touches that come with hosting a tournament on a holiday island – a free sightseeing and cultural tour for all players on Thursday, an excellent location for the players’ hotel in the heart of party-town, a boat trip to Comino on Monday (at the time of writing we haven’t been on this yet!) and an outdoor pool area at the venue for players to use between matches! Even the weather helped us out in the end – huge thunderstorms the day and night before the tournament started caused a bit of panic but James Pope’s dry weekend ‘prediction’ came up trumps and every tennis match was played outside.

Next year the tournament has the potential to be at least twice as big, with more badminton mats being available on the island (these ones came from Poland!), so spread the word and watch this space. I think this unique tournament has been a tremendous success, striking a really good balance between holiday and tournament. See you next year from 23^rd to 25^th September in Malta on the World Tour again!

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