Bronze medal for Georgia

Not many people of 85 years of age are still active in sport. Still less are competing on the international stage. Cippenham Table Tennis Club’s evergreen Georgia Veneer is. Mrs. Veneer, who won many local championships in Maidenhead in her heyday back in the fifties is still playing regularly for Cippenham in the Slough League, has recently returned from the Dutch city of Rotterdam with a bronze medal in the European Veteran’s Championships.

Barely four months after undergoing extensive knee surgery and with just a few practice sessions in the weekly Grand Prix series at Cippenham behind her, Georgia set off for Rotterdam with a medal in mind. She is not new to the podium: in 1999 Georgia was a semi-finalist in the over-75 Women’s Singles and two years later she was also a semi-finalist in the Over-75 Women’s Doubles.

This time she was competing in the over-85 class – the oldest age group. To gain her bronze medal Georgia teamed up with a German player Inge-Brigitte Herrmann. After losing to Martha Goransson and Betty Gray 3-0 they then defeated Jeanne Delay and Genevieve Rebattet 3-0. In their final match Veneer and Hermann were 2-1 up in games against Reine Bestel and Angele Joing but the French duo came back to secure the match 3-2. That was the difference between silver and gold.

Georgia also fared well in the singles event. Remarkably, considering the year she has had, she managed to win her preliminary round group by beating two French players, Jeanne Delay and Lucienne Pichard, both 3-0. However, in the first round of the knock-out stage she succumbed to Betty Gray of Wales 3-0.