Local Rackleton star wins bronze for GB

Following his third place in the British Racketlon Championships at the Parklangley Club in Beckenham in April this year, Lowdham resident Russ Blenkinsop was selected for the Great Britain 2nd team in the O65s World Championships in Rotterdam. Together with team mate Steve Hall he won a bronze medal.

Russ is well known locally for his community work as he co-founded Lowdham Colts youth football club, and was also an original member of Lowdham FLAG, where he worked hard to help bring the village’s flood alleviation scheme to life. 

Racketlon is a racquet sport competition where you play your opponent at table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis. The order of the matches is determined by the size of the racquet head, hence table tennis is first, badminton second, squash third and tennis is last. A match consists of playing each sport up to 21 points consecutively. The points across all four sports are then counted up and the winner is the one who has scored the most points.

Russ was partnered with Steve Hall, former Welsh International table tennis player. Russ who captains the Notts County 65+ tennis team, combined with Steve’s table tennis expertise was felt to be a powerful combination by the British selection committee.

In the quarter-finals of the team event Russ and Steve faced the indomitable task of taking on Hungary. The Hungarian team consists of the current world Racketlon champion, Peter Sakovics. Peter is one of the “GOATs” of the Racketlon World having won over 10 World titles. Russ and Steve decided that Russ was best placed to try to contain Peter and Steve would try to inflict a heavy defeat on the Hungarian number two Mihaly Pasti. The tactics worked perfectly, Steve, showed his class at table tennis inflicting a 11-2 defeat against Mihaly. Strong performances in the doubles and Russ containing Peter meant that scores were level after table tennis, badminton and squash – and the result of the match hinged on the final tennis doubles.

On paper this looked a formality for the Hungarian team as although Russ has played at the IFT 65+ events at Wimbledon and abroad, Steve is only a social tennis player. On the other side of the net Peter had achieved a career high International Tennis Federation World ranking of 125 and Mihaly Pasti was a regular club league player. However, like Steve had done in the table tennis, Russ played a superb game in which he completely dominated the match with his superior tennis and GB2 ran out with an 11-2 victory to seal the match.

In the semi-final the next morning, GB2 faced GB1, a match in which Steve and Russ lost to the inspirational squash player Duncan Marlow and his experienced Badminton partner Julian Clapp. In the afternoon they faced India for the bronze medal play-off, they produced a strong performance winning 8 out of 9 matches to seal an easy win and the bronze medal for Great Britain. Alongside the team event there was the individual World event and Russ secured fourth place in his age range.

Russ thanked Sycamore Table Tennis Club, Rushcliffe Squash club and Southwell Badminton club for providing coaching, support and playing time for raising the level of his games in sports he had not played for many years. If anybody is interested in knowing more about Racketlon please contact Russ on 07767 797 335 or visit racketlon.co.uk.