FOLLOWING his second place in the British Racketlon Championships at Beckenham in April, Wells’ Steve Hall was selected 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.

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.

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, 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, a former Welsh International table tennis player, inflicted 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.

However, Russell played a superb game and GB2 ran out 11-2 winners to seal the match.

In the semi-finals, GB2 faced GB1, a match in which Steve and Russell could not quite perform at their best and lost in a tight contest. They then faced India for the bronze medal play-off, and won 8 out of 9 matches to seal an easy win.