06. September 2017

The biggest tournament ever in the history of Racketlon is now in the past! European Racketlon players met in Vienna over 10 days in two different venues and fought for titles in the singles, doubles, mixed and team categories in the different age groups.

What a massive event, with an impressive centre court building for the elite players! The ORF+ channel even broadcasted the elite singles finals! Unfortunately, no Swiss player reached this final. But that doesn’t mean that Switzerland wasn’t successful!

Switzerland has won the first all-Swiss medal in an elite mixed draw ever: Nicole Eisler and Patrick Lorenz won bronze after a thrilling match against the pair from Great Britain Barbara Capper and Dan Busby.

Together with Zuzana Severinova from Czech Republic, Eisler even became vice champion in the elite Women’s A Doubles category after two really close matches!

Lorenz also almost won another medal in the Men’s A Doubles with Benjamin Hampl, missing bronze against the Austrian pair by only 4 points.

Swiss Racketlon Federation is also very proud of the two title winners Esther Dübendorfer and Graham King in the Doubles categories of their age groups!

The only two singles medal were won by our youngster Yannic Andrey in the U16 and Esther Dübendorfer in the +40 category.

Here the overview of our medals: 2x gold, 3x silver and 6x bronze medals!

Gold:

Esther Dübendorfer with Barbara Capper (GB), Women Doubles +40

Graham King with Julian Clapp (GB), Men Doubles +60

Silver:

Nicole Eisler with Zuzana Severinova (CZE), Women A Doubles

Adeline Kilchenmann and Esther Dübendorfer, Women B Doubles

Esther Dübendorfer, Women +40 (losing gold only by a gumiarm!)

Bronze:

Nicole Eisler and Patrick Lorenz, Mixed A Doubles

Yannic Andrey, Juniors U16

Adeline Kilchenmann and Danijel Batinic, Mixed B Doubles 

Yannic Andrey with Botond Francia (HUN), Juniors U16 Doubles

Esther Dübendorfer with Achim Berkemeier (GER), Mixed Doubles +45

Susan Rutschmann with Nicole Kamphues (GER), Women Doubles +40

Unfortunately, no Swiss team could win a medal but what strength and team-spirit they showed to fight against relegation!

In the Champions Division, Switzerland 1 (3rd of group B) and the Czech Republic (4th of group A) had to play the final deciding match. The winner would be safe, the loser faced a final match to decide its fate. With both teams incredibly evenly matched, each sport produced rubbers with only a couple of points between each player, Benjamin Hampl and Patrik Zak finishing with a 19-17 tennis rubber. Other extreme examples were Nicole Eisler who beat Zuzana Severinova by only 1 point and the doubles heroes Raphael Paglia and Christian Schäfer also winning by just 1 point. Ultimately, the entire match came down to a game of tennis between Patrick Lorenz and Marek Hruza, with 1 point separating the teams before they began. Patrick held his nerve and an 11-4 win handed Switzerland a 6-point victory in the whole match.

Switzerland 2 stood together in a thrilling last match against Austria 2. Congratulations to Adeline Kilchenmann, Esther Dübendorfer, Beat Ladner, Daniel Batinic, Marcel Fässler and Oliver Bühler for their effort to stay in the 1st division.

Switzerland 3 (with Dara Ladner, (injured) Tanja Omlin, Moreno Zulian, Patrick Bürgi, Philipp Dätwyler and Simon Zurschmiede) and Switzerland +45 (with Susan Rutschmann, Adi Waldis, Arno Graf, Graham King, Marc-André Rauber, Markus Furter and JD Andrey) won some individual matches to say it a nice way ;-)

Thank you all for the great team-spirit and also thanks to Aleksandra Milicevic (the team physio) for her help to get all the players quickly recovered after all these hard matches!

Impressions:

Juniors&Seniors

Doubles

Teams

Nicole Eisler

06. August 2017

...for Lorenz, Hampl and King in Nussloch

Tanja Omlin, Beat and Dara Ladner, Christian Schäfer, Danijel Batinic, Patrick Lorenz, Lukas Spring, Michael Strässle, Benjamin Hampl, Patrick Bürgi and Graham King were in Nussloch this year.

Let’s start with the most successful ones:

Best ranked Swiss Hampl (No. 8 in the FIR World Ranking) who came by public transport was very focused and proved the fact that he’s in real good shape currently. In the 32 players’ draw in Men A he destroyed Luke Barnes (No. 13) before tennis. In the quarter-final he was tested by No.2 Windischberger and lost the exciting game, though he won table tennis and tennis, finishing in 5th position. On top of that, his Champions League team was on the smallest podium after 8 energy-sapping games.

Due to her company’s schedule problems, Omlin couldn’t come to Nussloch before Friday. Nevertheless, she had a close semi-final in Women B and was second after three victories in a row.

King played 11 matches (how did he do that?) in 3 days and was most successful in Seniors +55 where he lost only the final game. We won’t talk about him losing all 6 of his doubles matches.

Strässle and Schäfer won all three matches in the small Elite Doubles draw and so were rewarded with gold!

Strässle (the ice cream killer) is still amused (not abused) about the repeating verbiage of the well-dressed ice cream seller who probably lost a bet and had to use the word „bitteschön“ 10 times in 5 minutes.

Lorenz had a gruelling meeting with Christian Wiessner. Especially in tennis it was extremely close at the end, unfortunately the Swiss Champ lost the game with 1 point difference. After that the Lorenz express beat Alex du Noyer (No. 29) and Duncan Stahl (No. 9)

Beat and Dara Ladner, the congenial mixed team, won their second match 21:0 in table tennis. Nothing more to be mentioned? Maybe not on the courts, but in Heidelberg the team was extremely successful in recruiting beardy types. In Singles Dara ended 5th and Beat 13th in their B draws.

Bürgi won all of his table tennis matches. Thank god he doesn’t practice the other 3 sports. He was heavily involved in the never-ending discussion about which are the real Swiss „Jass“-cards. We still have to find out if the majority of the Swiss Cantons use a French or a German deck. But for sure one of 36 cards is still swimming in the pool.

Batinic lost all Fri and Sat games, but after relaxing in the Wiessloch swimming baths and watching a movie of Adam and Eve he won two B-Singles matches on Sunday. I forgot the content of the movie, but apples and snakes were quite important, I guess.

Last and least (!!) Lukas Spring didn’t win a single game in Germany, just like the years before. But the party tiger is still coming back to Nussloch in 2018.

The pathetic author of this text promised to try the bachelor award in the famous shooting star bar next year. Who will join (stop) him? J

Christian Schäfer