Following his second place in the British Racketlon Championships at the Parklangley Club in Beckenham in April this year, Steve Hall was asked to captain the Great Britain 2nd team in the O65s World Championships in Rotterdam.
Racketlon is a racket sport competition where you play your opponent at table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis. The order of the matches is determined by the size of the racket head, hence table tennis is first, badminton second, squash third and tennis is last. The points are then counted up and the winner is the one who has scored the most points.
Steve was partnered with Russell Blenkinsop, who came third in the British Racketlon Championships. Russell is an expert tennis player having competed at Junior Wimbledon, this combined with Steve’s table tennis expertise was felt to be a powerful combination by the British selection committee.
In the quarter-finals of the team event Steve and Russell faced the indomitable task of taking on Hungary. The Hungarian team consists of the current world Racketlon champion, Peter Sakovics. Peter is the GOAT of the Racketlon World having won more World titles than any other person. Steve and Russell decided that Russell was best placed to try to contain Peter and Steve would try to inflict a heavy defeat on the Hungarian number two Mihaly Pasti. The tactics worked perfectly, Steve, who is a former Welsh International table tennis player, showed his class at table tennis inflicting a 11-2 defeat against Mihaly. He followed that by defeating Mihaly 11-6 at Badminton and 11-4 at squash. Here Steve’s training with Wells Hit and Run badminton group and Victoria Squash Club Street practice with training partner Gerald Snaith proved invaluable.
The result of the match hinged on the tennis doubles. Steve was facing current European Master doubles champion Peter Sakovics and Mihaly Pasti who has achieved a career high LTA World ranking of 125. On paper this looked a formality for the Hungarian team as Steve is only a social tennis player at Camvale Tennis Club, Paulton. However, Russell played a superb game in which he completely dominated the match with his superior tennis and GB2 ran out with an 11-2 victory to seal the match.
In the semi-final the next morning, GB2 faced GB1, a match in which Steve and Russell could not quite perform at their best and lost in a tight contest. In the afternoon they faced India for the bronze medal play-off, here they were back to full form winning 8 out of 9 matches to seal an easy win and the bronze medal for Great Britain.
If anybody is interested in knowing more about Racketlon please contact Steve on 07958640139.
