Today Tennis Canada nominated the 7 athletes that will represent Canada in this Years’ Wheelchair Tennis World Team Cup in Pretoria, South Africa, from April 25 – May 1st. The World Team Cup was created in 1985 due to the growth of foreign participation in the US Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships. It is comparable in format to the Davis and Federation Cup. The event has now been staged in 15 different countries and is a massive stand-alone tournament with over 300 participants and around 150 additional guests and coaches each year.
The Canadian men’s team will be represented by Yann Mathieu (Trois Rivieres, Quebec, currently ranked 27 in the ITF World Ranking), Philippe Bedard (Montreal, ranked 64), Corey Blatchford (Saskatoon, # 168) and reigning Canadian Champion Lee Carter from Winnipeg, Manitoba. They will be competing in World Group II with the goal of advancing to World Group I, which consists of the top 16 countries in the world.
The Quad Team is led by world # 5 Sarah Hunter from Surrey, BC. Sarah is joined by Adrian Dieleman (Hamilton, ON, # 19) and Gary Luker ( Ancaster, ON # 38). The Team will try to repeat their excellent performance at last years’ competition in Antalya, Turkey, where they came in 5th place.
Travelling with the Team are National High Performance Coach Christian Gingras (Quebec), National Development Coach Kai Schrameyer (Vancouver) and athletic therapist Mara Chaplin (Toronto)
“ We feel extremely good about the selection of our teams and are confident that they will represent Canada in the best possible way in Pretoria” says Janet Petras, director of wheelchair tennis.
Both teams will head to Pretoria 4 days in advance of the competition in order to acclimatize and train to prepare for competition.
