There is little news these days. This calendar year I won’t play international tournaments anymore due to the top sport budget exceedance and I am not able to finance anymore tournaments myself. Of course this is very annoying because now we restrict ourselves to training at Papendal while international tournaments are very important to find out where you stand compared to others.
But like Johan Cruijff always says: “It’s simple, every disadvantage has it’s advantage”. So maybe it is not that bad at all to have an extra long training period and to start the new year in a top condition. And this new year I will start with two events. As you know the past months we have experimented with the mixed doubles combinations and now our coach has cut the knot. Until the summer of 2012 I will definitely play together with Samantha Barning. This means that we will play 5 or 6 tournaments together in which we can show our performance. In the summer of 2012 all mixed doubles will be evaluated on the progress they have made. Then it will be decided if the pairs can be maintained or, if necessary, have to be changed for the next period of two years. In the summer of 2014 it should be clear which pairs can actually have a shot at an Olympic ticket. It is an ambitious plan of the technical staff and I really hope that it will deliver new successes in the mixed doubles. At least I will work hard, together with Samantha, to attain this objective.
This weekend we have two league matches. I will write a report on those matches later on.
Tags: badminton, jorrit de ruiter, mixed doubles, Papendal