Good start for Team England in India
13th October 2008Team England made a good start to the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India with wins in tennis, table tennis and boxing.
Tennis player Lewis Barnes from Birmingham was the first athlete in action for Team England and made a winning start in the boys’ singles with a straight sets victory (6-1 6-3) over Asher Jermiah Khan from Brunei Darussalam. The 18-year-old, who reached the quarter-finals of the boys doubles at Wimbledon this year, is likely to face the number one seed from Nigeria, Emmanuel Sunday, in the third round.
“You don’t always play that well in your first match so I was just pleased to get the win,” said Lewis afterwards. “I enjoyed it - it was good to get the first match under my belt and hopefully I’ll crack on from here.”
Lincoln’s Jade Windley, seeded one in the girls’ singles, and Lisa Whybourn from Cambridge also recorded straight sets wins to progress to the third round.
“She didn’t really have an answer to my game,” said Lisa about her opponent from Anguilla. “It was very hot today and it was nice to have an easy match to get started.”
Hannah Powell had the only medal winning opportunity for Team England today in the -48kg women’s weightlifting event. However, the Birmingham student weighed in eight kilos lighter than her opponents and despite setting a British record, finished in fifth position. The 15-year-old started well with a British record in the snatch but was disappointed to miss her final two attempts in the clean and jerk.
Team England won all six boxing events at the last Commonwealth Youth Games in Bendigo four years ago and made a winning start to this year’s event when Thomas Stubbs, a student bricklayer from Greater Manchester, stopped his opponent, Ricardo Blackman from Barbados, in the last round of his preliminary round bout of the light flyweight division.
“It was a good performance and I had some good support from the crowd which I appreciated,” said Thomas afterwards.
“There’s a little bit more to do,” said head coach Mick Gannon “but that’s the first one out of the way and the rest of the team will all want to follow suit now. It’s hard to be the first one of the team into the ring so the boy did well.”
The table tennis got underway today with the start of the preliminary group stages of the men’s and women’s singles. Nottingham’s Gavin Evans, Chesterfield’s Liam Pitchford and Karina LeFevre from Thornaby all recorded two wins and are sure of progressing to tomorrow’s main draw. However, Natalie Slater from Stoke-on-Trent is almost certainly out of the singles after losing both her matches.
“The first match was more difficult because I was a bit nervous,” said Karina, “but I knew what to expect in the second match. Sometimes it’s difficult against unfamiliar players as you don’t know what tactics to use so you’re better off playing your own game and see what happens.”
“I didn’t play very well in the first match,” said Gavin. “We’ve only trained in the warm-up hall and so it took me a bit of time to get used to the bigger hall and the bounce of the ball. But the second match was a lot better.”
There was disappointment for the badminton squad as both Ben Tier from Havant and Sheffield student Richard Morris went out of the singles competition. Ben lost 21-19 in the deciding set to James Eunson of NewZealand, while Richard made a promising start against his Indian opponent, Aditya Prakash, but eventually lost in straight sets.
Tomorrow sees the start of the athletics programme and Team England also has medal prospects in shooting, wrestling and weightlifting.
Team England has an 80-strong team competing at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games, which run from 12th to 18th October. Team England has athletes competing in all nine sports at the Games – athletics, badminton, boxing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.
Team England finished first in the overall medals table at the first Commonwealth Youth Games, held in Edinburgh in 2000 with 36 golds, 41 silvers and 18 bronzes; and second at the 2004 Games in Bendigo, Australia, with 41 golds, 31 silvers and 29 bronzes.