Ian Thomas Retains Racketlon Title

Twelve members battled in our annual Racketlon tournament recently, when the players fight it out in a competition of skill and fitness in Tennis, Squash, Racketball and Table Tennis until there is only one left standing. This year’s competition was well-balanced and lively, starting with four round robin groups of three players per group. The top two in each group advanced to quarter-finals as shown below, and good performances were achieved by the four players whose competition ended at the group stage. They were: –

Sam Berrill – with close matches against Athar Ahmed in Tennis and Racketball, and a great Squash win against Paul Armstrong.

Manjit Ubhi – gaining solid points in Tennis, Squash and Racketball – but Table Tennis being his weaker discipline this year.

Russell West – narrowly missing out in a very close group including Ryan Pescod and Pat O’Riordan, going right to the wire on the total points tally. Bad luck Russ!

Harsha Samarawickrama – who ran non-stop in all rounds, and still had the legs to play on if we had let him!

The knockout stages of the tournament continued to quarter and then semi-finals, followed by a head-to-head play off final. To keep the players on their toes the sequence of sports changed in each round, testing the players’ skills to adapt to the different pace and weight of each ball.

There were two attritional semi-finals with Sam Morris coming through strongly against last year’s runner-up Athar. Also notably improved from previous years was Paul Armstrong, but he was up against a marauding Ian Thomas in the second semi-final, which was always going to be tough! And so to the final between the young pretender Sam Morris and the veteran defending champion Ian Thomas.

Ian stamped his authority on the Racketball leg, only for Sam to hit back in Squash and a thrilling and tight encounter. Alas, this performance was not quite enough to give himself a buffer before the Tennis and Table Tennis legs, but still Sam fought hard for every point. Congratulations to Sam for a truly great effort, to all 12 players for a fantastic afternoon of racket sports and, of course, to Ian for defending his title superbly! Who can stop him next year?