All Africa Badminton Championships in Algiers |21 February 2018

Women’s doubles gold medallists Ah-Wan and Camille return

Gold medallists Juliette Ah-Wan and Alisen Camille returned home yesterday morning after defeating the Egyptian team in the women’s doubles in the All Africa Badminton Championship in Algiers, Algeria.

The gold medallists touched down along with the rest of the badminton team and at the Seychelles International Airport was a welcome party comprising Youth, Sports and Culture Minister Mitcy Larue and National Sports Council chief executive Giovanna Rousseau.

Having retired from the sport of badminton since two years, Ah-Wan explained that she decided to come out of retirement to train for the All Africa Badminton Championship. And it has worked out to be a good move as the veteran showed she has lost none of her touch as she joined forces with her cousin Alisen Camille to win the title for a second time after a first win in 2013 in Mauritius.

“I’m quite surprised with this result. I stopped for the last two years and I just returned six months ago and I didn’t even expect to be in the top three to be honest, but I know Alisen was confident, since she’s been to these competitions a couple of times and she knew what level they were at. It wasn’t easy taking the win, but we ended up getting the gold medal,” said Ah-Wan.

According to Ah-Wan, she was quite worried when Camille started feeling pain in her ankle during their match in the semifinal against Algeria’s Halla Bouksani and Linda Mazri, however they still fought through and took the win against the team on a close score in the second set (21-16, 21-19). Both athletes are very proud of the accomplishment, especially as it has come so early into the year.

“I’m really happy with the win. I was confident since last year and I knew we would be able to do it. It wasn’t easy since all teams were quite challenging and came all out to win. We gave all that we could, we even had to dig deep into our reserves to come up with the win,” said Camille.

The two gold medallists are currently preparing for next month’s Commonwealth Games to be held in Gold Coast, Australia where they wish to again bring a positive result for Seychelles, not just in the doubles but also in the singles.

The badminton team were accompanied by Chinese coach Luo Guo Hui who has been working closely with the gold medallists for the past two weeks and Seychellois coach Calixte Francourt.

Coach Francourt has been working very close with the men’s team and explained that the players need to work more on their game. Kervin Ghislain reached the furthest in the men’s singles, that only being round two after defeating Zimbabwe’s Paul Kopolo 2-1 (12-21, 21-15, 21-7) but he eventually lost 0-2 (6-21, 18-21) in round two against Egyptian Adham Hateem.

The other players were not as lucky as badminton player of the year 2017 Lou Jie lost to Algerian Youcef Medel 0-2 (10-21, 17-21), and Jakim Renaud also lost to an Algerian, Mohamed Abderrahime, 0-2 (6-21, 8-21). As for Steve Malcouzane he did not play in the singles event.

“The men’s team have a lot of work to do. They need to work harder in training if they wish to advance in the sport. Seychelles used to be ranked third in Africa and frankly we need to work closer with the young male players to get them to become better badminton players,” said coach Francourt.

Mauritius won three gold medals ‒ men’s singles, women’s singles and women’s team event ‒ while hosts Algeria picked up the other three titles ‒ men’s team event, mixed doubles and men’s doubles.

Rodney Rose