“Happy Slam”

Beside baseball, cricket and football there is another kind of sport which often seems to be in the shade when talking about Australia.  Thereby you shouldn’t forget that Down Under – or better Melbourne – is part of a very awesome international tournament. You might already noticed what I’m talking about: the Australian Open which are part of the international Grand Slam tournament which takes place in Australia, French, Great Britain an in the US. It’s all about tennis. This sport has suffered from a void where much of the history has simply vanished or focused only on the leading players of the time where Aussies were “just” part of during the 1960’s. Australia, does have a significant place in the annals of tennis and it a pleasure to present, in the one location, some interesting historical aspects of the game as it developed here and spawned a sporting industry which catered to the demand. The Grand Slam tournaments are the biggest, highest paid and most popular tennis tournaments all over the world. 

 

 

Probably the most successful Australian tennis player is Rodney George Laver. With more than 200 single titles won during his career he is also one of the greatest tennis player in the history of this sport.
Nowadays there are a few tennis players who shared the best ranks with each other: the “Elite Four” consisting of the Spanish Rafael Nadal, the Swiss Roger Federer, the Serb Novak Djokovic and the Scot Andy Murray. It is hard to really differentiate between these four great grand slam players although Djokovic is the only one of them who won all of the four tournaments in a row.

 

Rod Laver

 

When talking about Tennis in Australia you cannot miss the Australian Open. The Australian Open – the first of the annual four major international tennis tournaments – takes place every year in January in Melbourne. They had a difficult stand in the history of tennis tournaments.
In the 1980’s there were lots of discussions about the fact if the Australian Open are still allowed to be a part of the so-called “Big Four”. The best tennis players at this time didn’t join the event in Down Under ’cause the Australian Open were hold over the time of Christmas. That made the tournament unattractive especially for the successful European and American players like Bjorn Borg or John McEnroe.
Not until 1986 the Australian Open organisers decided to change the dates of the Australian Open to the end of January. Therefore they also agreed to change the location and since 1988 the Australian Open  have hold in Melbourne.

 

 

In the time era between 1950 to 1968 Aussies won the Davis Cup 15 out of 18 times – until today the most successful era of any country in the Davis Cup. The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men’s tennis. The Aussie men won the Davis Cup more than 20 times since this event has been taking place in 1900. The premier women event is the Federation Cup. By the way Australia is one of just three nations all over the world which won both titles in one year.
When thinking about tennis in Australia you have to mention the “golden age” of this sport between the 1950’s and 1960’s. During the 1960’s the international world of tennis were dominated by six Australian men: Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Ken Rosewall and Fred Stolle who won at least one Grand Slam title during this era.
Today the Australian Open are one of the most popular sport events in the world and can reach millions of visitors each year. It’s definitely a must if you visit the most awesome country all over the world.

Thanks for that!

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World Masters Games

In 2017 the 9th World Masters Games are going to take place in Auckland New Zealand. The World Masters Games are an international sport event – but not the same as every other one. It is called the biggest multi-sport competition on the world. There are two criteria for participants to be allowed to take part at this competition. Firstly they need to be a member of their sport – obviously. Secondly they have to be at minimum in the age range between 25 and 35 (mostly the athletes are not younger than 40 years) to an open end maximum age. The average age of the participants is 50 years. (For comparison only: The average age of Olympians is 26 years.) And to stress it it’s interesting that the athletes don’t represent their country so there is no process of getting selected in a national competition.
The first games ever were hold in Toronto in 1985. Since then the World Masters Games have been taking place generally every four years. Next year more than 25.000 athletics are going to be expected in this event consisting of over 45 disciplines.

 

 

The idea behind the games was to give former Olympians the chance to have a few more competitions even if they are older than Olympic athletes. So more than 230 past Olympians participated at the Masters World Games in 2009 in Australia seven years ago. But there are not just these type of sportspersons.
There are lots of different sports disciplines. The former but still passionate sportsmen compete against each other in competitions like weightlifting, athletics or tennis. The oldest guy who competed at the World Masters Games was more than 100 years old – and still won a gold medal in his discipline of 100 metres for which he needed more than two minutes.
Significant the motto of the World Masters Games in Sydney: Fit, fun and forever young. A prove for the success of that sport event is the fact that more athletes took part at the World Masters Games in Sydney in 2009 than at the Olympic games in the same city nine years ago.
Until today above 20.000 athletes from over 95 countries have applied for the upcoming event in 2017. To put it in a nutshell: the World Masters Games are even bigger than the Olympic Games.  Unbelievable isn’t it?

 

 

The World Masters Games have got an impressive history and are a proof of the success of sports out of “normal” age. When you think about the fact that just 8000 athletes took part at the first World Masters Games it’s unbelievable that since the first competition the number of participants have been rising year per year to one of the biggest sport competitions all over the world. As it was hold in 2013 athletes from more than 107 different countries took part at it. There were already some winter sport events in 2010 and 2015 which also had a big number of participants.
The World Masters Games are the international edition of this kind of Olympic events with smaller competitions like the European Masters Games or the Pacific Masters Games to bridge the time gap to the next WMGs.
It is definitely an arising sport event so why don’t become a part of the also growing fan community?

 

Cheers! 

 

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How was your weekend?

Me and some friends visited a fantastic sport event in Sydney –  an exciting fundraising match. On October 22nd the 9th Dragon Abreast Festival took place at Darling Harbour. This kind of feast has been taking place in spring each year since it started in 2007. It is a competition where at least two dragon boat-teams have to give their best to win the single contest.

I went there ’cause I never saw a dragon boat race before. The information about the festival were written down on an event website. And my idea was: “Well if I’m around anyway I can visit adventures like this.” When I arrived at the location it started to rain. Therefore my respect for all the participants and volunteers who braved the elements and did not stop their work. And trust me it was amazing to watch more than 30 teams which took part at this competition even under this circumstances.
The entire underlying idea of that festival is to take people aware of breast cancer. During 2016 just here in Australia already more than 15500 women got the diagnosis that they suffer from this disease. Even if there is a chance to survive it there are above 3000 women who died in cause of this sickness for the last few months. The Dragon Abreast Festival – which is part of the Dragon Abreast Australia – wants to support the researches of medicines to defeat breast cancer and to help breast cancer survivors to get back into a normal life. For this all the teams of the festival donated an optional amount of money. All in all they collect over $100.000.

Even as a spectator you felt the motivation of the teams to become the best in categories like Fastest Female Team or Best Dressed Team.  Even the team with the “most generous” time won a prize – the Wooden Paddle Award. As it was a very successful event it will be continued in 2017 – when the Dragon Abreast Festival will celebrate its 10th birthday.

Good luck and much success furthermore for that awesome way of fundraising!

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