Tennis

2011 Maere Cup Winner - Germany
Germany (ALBRECHT Heike & FLECKENSTEIN Verena)
2011 Dresse Cup Winner - Austria
Austria (KARGL Mario, ERLBACHER Daniel, GRAVOGL Robert & STALZER Christian)

12 men teams and 9 women teams from 13 countries participated in the Dresse & Maere Tennis Cups in Izmir / Turkey from 18th till 25th June 2011.

This tournament took place at the nice tennis center in Karsiyaka which has 11 tennis courts. The whole week was very hot and sunny every day. Mostly the temperature risen up to 40 Celsius.

I was very happy about the excellent service of the rapid organization of the Turkish Deaf Sports Federation on site especially with the bus transfer from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the tennis center and vice versa. All tennis athletes were thrilled about it. Hereby my big thank you!

Working with the ITF referee Cetin Kesici and the chair umpires was very good and I had a lot of fun with it. Also I am very happy about the new tennis athletes who play very well and can make an important role in the future. Many matches were very exciting and often lasted more than 2-3 hours during the heat weather. All tennis athletes could deal with the heat surprisingly well. Just in the decisive final match, a player had to cancel this match because of heat exhaustion.

In spite of everything this is a tremendous achievement of the tennis athletes during the whole tournament week! Our ICSD Board member Dwight Benedict has awarded the women and men teams for their places during the closing ceremony. Our chief executive Mark Cooper was also able to join us.

Now there are the results (the first 4 teams):

Maere Tennis Cup (Women competition)
Winner: Germany
Runner-Up: Spain
3rd place: Chinese Taipei
4th place: Great Britain

Dresse Tennis Cup (Men competition)
Winner: Austria
Runner-Up: Germany
3rd place: France
4th place: Japan

You can see further information and results in our ICSD homepage (www.deaflympics.com/sports/index.asp?CID=42)

The next Dresse & Maere Tennis Cups will take place in 3 (three!) years, because we will hold the 1st World Deaf Tennis Championship in the year 2015.

Dear Deaf Sports Federations, please bring in your applicationPDF for the 2014 Dresse & Maere Tennis Cups or for the 2015 World Deaf Tennis Championships to our ICSD office by email office@ciss.org as soon as possible.

Best regards

Tobias BURZ
ICSD Technical Director - Tennis

By Tobias Burz