It was an intense and exciting “long” weekend that took place from Friday 30 April to Monday 1 May at the Monviso Sporting Club in Grogliasco, where the Para Permanent Tennis Championships offered moments of great sport. The event, organized by Sportdipi, brought to Italy 28 of the best international interpreters in the specialty, coming from 12 different countries around the world (Italy, Brazil, Chile, Sweden, Austria, Spain, United Kingdom, Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan and the United States ).
In singles, Brazilian Thaleta Silva Rodrigues (PST 1-2 class intended for athletes with amputations of the upper and lower limbs below the knee or similar) and American Daniel Robert Scrivano (PST 3-4 class intended for athletes with lower-handicap) amputations above the knee or similar Alike): The first defeated Austrian Thomas Reichchendler 6-4 7-5 in the final, while the second defeated Japanese Shunsuke Kishi 6-1 7-5.
In doubles, success went instead to the Austrian pair formed by Wolfgang Plame and Matthias Hall (PST 1-2 class) and the Chilean-Argentine pair formed by Luis Andrés Viñales Hidalgo and Javier Spresvani: the former defeated the Swedes Victor Bonn and Harald von Koch 6-1, 6- 0, while the latter beat singles runners-up Keshi and Scrivano 6-4, 6-1. Finally, Chilean Martina Seibert Cepeda (born in 2005) and Sweden’s Victor Bonn (born in 2003) won the Youngest Players awards.
The complete success of the second edition of the tournament was possible thanks to the great work of its main organizer, as well as the vice president of the International Par-Tennis Federation, Gregory Liberdi: «I am satisfied – he commented – on both. The number of athletes for the level achieved. We intend to propose it again and organize a training camp for beginners, possibly in September. Moreover, now that we have come into contact with the International Tennis Federation, we want to demonstrate even more strongly the impressive competitiveness that these athletes have. The ITF itself has already announced its intention to support us and has given us its motto for upcoming events: we still have to work out the details, but this is definitely a step forward. Paralympic tennis is not yet recognized at the Paralympic level and for this reason, together with President Ivan Corretja, we continue to fight for it to be administered directly by the ITF as is already the case for wheelchair tennis. There are many items in our favor: in the world only 10% of people with disabilities use a wheelchair and semi-standing tennis athletes, from a quick count, they are already more than 300 people from 25 different countries, covering 5 continents. Formalizing it would be very important because there are very good kids who are excluded from the Paralympics simply because they play without one or both arms.”
Certainly one of the most important victories was Thalitha Silva Rodriguez’s victory in singles PST 1-2: the Brazilian, the only woman to co-champion with Chilean Martina Siebert Cepeda, beat rivals such as Harald von Koch 6-2 7-6 and veteran Franco Breno ( Finalist of the last edition) 4-6 7-6 10-5, before defeating Reichkendler in the final (the latter, in the semi-finals, defeated the winner of the first edition Ivan Corretja): “I am very happy – he declares – because the level was very high and it was The boys are very strong, and for that I want to thank all the people who have supported me This sport represents my whole life: I have been a tennis player since I was eight years old and have always played against non-disabled people, but I come here and meet many one-armed athletes like me or “Others I haven’t. Even thinking about the possibility of playing it was really cool. I really hope that the semi-permanent tennis movement will grow more and more.”
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