La Carreta & Juego de Pelota

La Carreta and Juego de Pelota, Leige 16th - 20th July 2019

It was the first time that La Carreta and the Juego de Pelota were organised together. After having organised the Juego de Pelota two years ago in Brussels, the IC of Belgium accepted to do it again. This worked really well to the entire satisfaction of all the participants. The choice of the venue was excellent: the Royal Tennis Club de Liège is really a first class club for such an event. The lunches of an outstanding quality were taken every day at the club and three special evenings took place during the event: a welcome BBQ at the club and two dinners in well-known restaurants in the Liège area.

Six teams were competing in each competition, therefore it was organised in a round robin format with two groups of three teams. And on the last day were the ranking matches to establish the final position of each team. Both events were played in true IC spirit which made it really enjoyable. Everyone expressed the hope that this could become a regular bi-annual event.

A strong team of Germany won La Carreta Cup, defeating an excellent team from Great Britain in the final: Anke Wurst (N°2 in the ITF ranking) easily won the first singles but the two other matches were very close, with the second singles going to Germany and the doubles to GB. The team of Israël took the third place while Belgium B and Belgium A finished 4 and 5, having both beaten France who finished in 6th place.

For the third time in a row, France won the Juego de Pelota with the same players; François Pierson, Patrice Beust and Michel Leclercq. All three men are greater than 75 years old, but Michel played in the 70+ together with Pierre-Hervé Gautier, the new French champion in the 70+ category. They won in the final against Great Britain by 4 matches to 1, with the only British winner being Mark Cox against Patrice Beust. Actually, the same final took place between the same two countries, in the last Juego de Pelota 2 years ago in Brussels.

The four other teams were strong opponents for France and GB: in fact the final result of most of the ties was 4-2. Austria took the third place after a very close tie against Belgium: 3-3, 6 sets to 6, 55 games to 52. For the fifth place, an excellent and friendly team of the Caribbean Islands under the captainship of Kit Spencer won 4-2 against Germany.

For more pictures and a list of full results, visit the IC of Belgium site here https://sites.google.com/site/icbelgium/annee-2019/juego-de-pelota-carreta-2019