Hi

Apologies for taking so long to reply again here! Thank you all for congratulating me on my medal win a couple months ago!

Paul – Thank you for the offer to help with mindset side of things. I’ve done a bit of work on it since the England International and will see how things go with the current interventions I’ve been working on at my next tournament next week.

Peter – On reflection I’m really happy to get my first medal in an International competition. At the time I felt I didn’t play anywhere near my best and sort of felt it wasn’t really a medal winning performance in that tournament.

Next week is the European Para-Badminton Championships in Murcia, Spain! The entry list is out (can be seen in the link below) and is looking to be very tough!

http://tournamentsoftware.com/…..A195F77A9E

I would love to come away with a medal but my main goal is to play well and put in a good performance and ultimately just try my best.

Owen

Hi

Returned home yesterday after a great week in Spain for the European Championships.

The conditions were very tough to play in as it was extremely hot inside the hall with temperatures over 35 degrees!

The floor was also tough for wheelchair players as our ideal surface to play on is a hard wooden floor but this sports hall had a very soft bouncy type of flooring.

In the singles I ended up with a very unlucky draw having the second seed from France David Toupe and another highly ranked player in my group from Russia Yuri Stepanov. I lost to David 8-21 9 -21 though despite the scoreline I felt I had played a very good match with some good shots and leading at the start of both games before David took control.

Against Yuri I lost 18 – 21 10-21. The first game was a very tight game where we both matched each other point for point and the lead going either way. At 18 all I made 3 errors (clearing and lifting long, and hitting a smash into the net) which gave Yuri the first game. The second game Yuri seemed to have me figured out tactically and I began to get frustrated as I wasn’t able to focus and adapt.

In the mens doubles I was part of a scratch pairing with another Russian player, Alexander Polsystankin, who I had played and lost against at the English International (described in an earlier post) where we reached the quarter finals losing 19-21 15 – 21. I felt this was my best match of the tournament and as a totally new pairing I’m very happy with how far we had progressed.

For me in mixed doubles the tournament was over before it had began. My partner Paula had to be reclassified and unfortunately, without going into too much detail, didn’t fit into the new classification criteria and was ineligible to play. She was devastated.

England came away from the European Championships with 5 Gold, 7 Silver and 5 Bronze medals across all the disability classifications which the biggest medal tally out of all the Countries entered!

Hi Paul

Thank you for your questions.

I think what I have learned about myself may answer the majority of your questions; I’m not as quick at covering the court in my chair as I thought was!

I was slightly late and stretching onto a lot of shuttles Granted the surface we were playing on probably didn’t help, but I seemed to struggle more than most did at getting to the shuttle in the tournament. I don’t have as long a reach as most other players do so I have to move that extra bit more.

The head coach also pointed this out during a conversation I had with him after the tournament. He says I’m very good with the racket but just need to take/get to the shuttle a little bit earlier.

This is definitely a key element I need to work on. Speeding up my movement on court and becoming more explosive.

Against Yuri in the second game he caught me out a lot playing me around all the corners and then finally playing a flat clear to which I just struggled to get to.

David Toupe is a former French junior International from many years ago before his accident, he use to play against the likes of Nathan Robertson as a Junior! He has excellent racket skills and is generally a very tricky player to play against and has a wealth of experience on top of good court coverage. At the beginning of both games I was matching him point for point and got some good rallys and shots in. I think here he was just more skilled and experienced and forced me in to a lot of errors in the latter stages of the games. I’ve played against him in every International tournament I’ve played in so far, always seem to get drawn up against him in the group stage haha! Though I think performance wise this is one the best I had played against him so far as well as in the England International.

Owen