Antalya, Turkey, 1-5 May 2002

30^th inter-agency games

Gold again in tennis for UNOG

To win gold in tennis at the Inter-Agency Games is hard. This happens just once in ten years on average, at least for the UNOG team. This May in Antalya the team won gold for the second time in the last 20 years. Even with stars like Mauricio Cysne, Natasha Koval, Slobodan Relic and Christiana Stepanek-Allen, all top players on the (amateur) tennis circuit in Geneva, victory did not come easily. All matches were won by only 3:2. At 2:2 in the first match against UN New York, and 0:3 down in the first set of the mixed-doubles, some team members began to make alternative plans for the rest of their stay in Antalya (do we go water-skiing tomorrow?). But Christiana and Misha Kouzmenko (captain) recovered heroically several times against Japanese former national players to win in three sets (and two days), thus clearing the way to gold.

The final battle for gold was against the sister Geneva-based WHO, with stars of no less calibre, such as Hernan Velasquez and Elena Subirats, a (former) quarter-finalist in the French Open. Good tactics, team spirit, tempering of individual ambitions, cool-headed captaincy and, last but not least, good tennis were all factors needed to beat WHO 3:2, again with the final mixed-doubles match proving decisive and won by Natasha and Slobodan. The other members of the winning UNOG team were: Danielle Binay, Diana Cunningham, Nikolai Dmitrevski and Zbig Zimny.