SHAUN “MANAGES” BRONZE GONG IN HONG KONG!
INAS, the International organisation which supports athletes with intellectual disabilities, held their inaugural Table Tennis World Championships in Hong Kong between 11-19th December and our own club chairman Shaun Newcomb travelled there as the Great Britain Team Manager.
Shaun was selected due to his experience coaching table tennis to players with a wide variety of physical and intellectual disabilities and had worked with both the two players selected, Adam Thompson from Cheshire and Patrick Cox from Leicestershire. Also selected as second GB Coach was Chris Turner, who Shaun had worked with as a colleague at the English Table Tennis Association.
“The standard of table tennis at these championships was unbelievably high..” said Shaun, with the top players he believes would probably beat our GB top 10 non disabled juniors. Patrick, who is world ranked 76 was not expected to do particularly well yet at this level yet and was selected more for experience, plus to play in the Team competition with Adam; indeed the boys did well in that event, beating the number 3 seeded Russian team 3-1 and finishing the event in fourth position, narrowly missing out on the Team bronze medal to the Hong Kong team in the final match.
In the singles Adam considerably out-performed his world ranking of 22 by taking a bronze medal, gaining the teams’ “revenge” by beating one of the Hong Kong team players in the quarter final!
Pictured below: Adam (with medal), Chris, Patrick and Shaun with their allocated Team Liaison Officer K. K. Leung.
Thanks to the organisers who Shaun says staged a superb event and Cathay Pacific airlines who sponsored the flights for the GB team, the whole team had a truly memorable experience. For further information see http://inas.wttc2013.hksam.org.hk/
Posted on 02/01/2014, in 1. News. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.
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