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Pride Games 2005 : Badminton & Tennis...
review With the aim of bringing you a taste of what the Manchester Pride Games weekend was all about, we set off around the city, map in hand, to photograph as many of the activities as we could...Although we didn't necessarily find everything (unfortunately we weren't able to make it over to the tennis, and we weren't quite sure what had happened to the Rugby... maybe we were in the wrong field?!), we did manage to visit most of the venues and chat to some of the participants of the various sports going on. Sprits were high, and the atmosphere was fantastic everywhere we went. Our tour began, then, with some of the indoor events. We managed to grab a couple of snaps of the basketball and volleyball players after they'd finished their morning's training with pro coaches. We moved on to the badminton tournament which was in full swing...
Badminton With 105 players from the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, with 9 hours of play over 16 courts and with about 280 games of badminton played this was quite a feat of organisation! Ian Roberts, the chair of the Northern Flight Badminton Club who organised the event. tells us that the event finished less than ten minutes adrift of their schedule... Congratulations for a fabulous job! Ian dropped REALManchester a note to explain the results tables: In common with other gay sports, the badminton tournaments are primarily about inclusion and participation and are therefore mixed ability events. Participants play in one of four levels against people at the same ability level (A being the top, then B+, B- then C). Unfortunately this year we did not have enough women playing to do a full separate women's draw, so for the doubles everyone played together. The challenge cups were awarded to the best male/female players. Northern Flight (the home team, and the organisers of the event) topped the medals table with their best ever set of results... two better than their team debut in Frankfurt last year. The A doubles final was a superb match in which the top pair from London avenged their defeat by Manchester's top pair earlier this year in the Glasgow tournament. The final was filmed by the BBC! The standard of play was generally very high - all the top players turned out, and the A draw was very large compared to the size of the tournament. One comment from a player from Paris: "The standard is very good - my level feels like it's the level above in some of the tournaments on the continent!". Praise indeed? Please click for a full set of badminton results. (76k PDF)
Tennis Michel from Northern Aces has asked us to pass on the following note of thanks: First of all thanks to the competitors and volunteers with a special mention to the girls, Karon and Rebecca. Thanks to the Sport City tennis centre staff and especially to Vicky. Thanks to the Northern Aces tournament team for the efforts made to organise and run this competition, to all the Northern Aces tennis group for their support, help and participation and to all the people from Northern Waves and Pride that have, at some point, helped us in giving support and advice. I'm sure I've missed someone, but I hope no-one will be upset! Please click for a full set of tennis results. (30k PDF) Related websites:
about Manchester Pride
about Pride Games
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George House Trust
Huw
