Sports weekend

Not a bad weekend going to the Yonex All England Championship on Saturday 8th March followed by Nottingham Panthers v Fife Flyers on Sunday 9th.

Badminton

The badminton on show was incredible!!! Seeing World No.1 Lee Chong Wei play for the first time was truly inspirational. He lost the first set 14-21 before winning the second 21-19 and third 21-15 without looking like it took any effort at all. It was a near master class at how to make a sport look easy!

One of the other highlights for the day was seeing the Para-badminton. The players were brilliant and the crowd loved it. The wheelchair and short stature players just reminded me of how good the London 2012 Paralympics were. Hopefully Para-badminton can make it into the Paralympics in the near future.

Ice Hockey

Boot Camp Sunday morning was filled with talk of "How many fights will we see later at the Ice Hockey?" haha. A group of 12 of us travelled to Nottingham with 4 people seeing their first Ice Hockey match. It was Panthers v Flyers and the last home game of the season in the league for Panthers. Just like when I saw my first match I could hear people talking about how good are they at skating, how do they not fall over, where's the puck? haha. It's such a fast and brutal sport but 100% family focused with a crowd of all ages enjoying a great sporting event. Panthers came out 5-2 winners making it look very easy in the 3rd period.

Photos from the weekend can be found on my instagram

Racquet-sports

Badminton v Squash v Tennis

This morning I have been reading about Ramy Ashour being "the world's greatest racquet-sport player?" http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/squash/22526762

He is one amazing Squash player and I would love to play against him. I know I would be running round the court like a headless chicken while he had time to showboat but it would be worth it.

BUT in the article they don't even mention Badminton. Lee Chong Wei is an incredible badminton player (currently World #1) and one hell of an athlete with how he moves around the court. In theory he's the Badminton equivalent to Ramy Ashour.

So can you really say one player is the "best" racquet-sport player in the world when each racquet-sport requires it's own unique set of skills to make the shots look so easy. A tennis ball, squash ball and shuttlecock all act totally differently to each other. I would love to see a three way battle between Ramy Ashour, Lee Chong Wei and Roger Federer over their three sports.

 

But Lee Chong Wei is just as fast with the reactions - http://youtu.be/oyFH9KaF6Fo

 

And we can't forget how good Roger Federer is - http://youtu.be/nQ7HvffZpRI