Media Release from Pune - 11th October 2008

We are pleased to report on the draw for the Tennis Tournament at the Youth Commonwealth Games in Pune. It was made late tonight after a long drawn out process lasting some 6 hours from start to finish. The Tennis events have been heavily subscribed such that competition will start first thing tomorrow morning, which will be prior to the Opening Ceremony. Charlie Cohen was the most surprised person to find himself seeded at number 12 and thus given an automatic bye into the next round. Scott Clayton was not quite so fortunate as he was not seeded as he does not have a ranking due to his age. However, he was then given one of the lucky byes into the next round. This means that both the Jersey boys will not start competition until Monday morning. The draw was then not too kind to Scott as he is scheduled to play the Indian number 2 player, who is seeded 6. It is quite likely that Scott will play on centre court, although that has yet to be confirmed, and this will prove to be quite an occasion for him as the crowd capacity of that court is several thousand. Charlie will have to wait until tomorrow’s matches before finding out whom he will play.

The Jersey girls were also pleased with their draw, although neither was seeded and will therefore have to play tomorrow morning. Kirsten McArthur will start first in the second scheduled match against a girl from the Seychelles. Katie Gouyette will start on the same court in the next scheduled match after Kirsten against a competitor from Sri Lanka, who has not even arrived yet as the Sri Lankan team are only due to arrive very late tonight. That may give Katie an advantage as the Sri Lankan will have had no local acclimation, but we shall see how that goes. Katie will on the other hand have the disadvantage of playing in the midday sun, which can be very strong and of course temperatures in the mid 30C’s.

Athletics does not start until next Tuesday and it looks like Jenna Murphy will go straight through to the High Jump final as the number of entries for the girl’s High Jump will allow it to be a straight final. The same applies to Zane Duquemin in both of his events, the discus and shot. However, Stephen de la Haye in the High Jump and Gemma Dawkins in the 400 metres will have tough challenges in their events to make finals as the entries in both their events are numerous and very strong. The athletics draws have yet to take place and these comments are subject to that technical meeting on Monday.
Swimming does not start until next Wednesday and the 4 Jersey swimmers are busy practising in the open air pool and will not know their draws until early next week.

The Jersey Team attended a Welcome Ceremony for all teams tonight, which included an exchange of gifts and a rather long cultural extravaganza of local culture through dance and song. Unfortunately the rain cut short some of the proceedings, but it was an indicator for the main event tomorrow that is the Opening Ceremony, which is building up to be quite an event.

All members of Team Jersey are most grateful to Sanne Group for their sponsorship and to ESC for its grant to allow them to attend the Games