Guernsey Press

Mixed doubles gold tops off great week

A GOLD medal twice eluded Jordan Trebert on the last day of the Games and if that was not enough of a pain, his aching elbow made it worse. The improving Sarnian lost two finals.

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Initially, Jersey's Mark Constable became the first man in Island Games history to successfully defend a men's singles title yesterday, as he beat the spirited youngster.

The 40-year-old has been struggling with a calf injury since arriving in Gotland, but he maintained his record of not dropping a single set en route to gold.

Unseeded Trebert had done tremendously well to reach the showdown, eliminating second seed Bartal Poulsen, of the Faroe Islands in Thursday's semi-finals, and he began the final in a confident mood.

The Sarnian led from the start as Constable struggled to assert himself. Trailing 15-14, however, the Jersey development officer won eight successive points to clinch the first set. Trebert looked gutted and never really recovered from that set-back.

Constable raced into a 6-0 lead in the second, an advantage which had swelled to 11-3 as the players took a break. From there, the defending champion comfortably closed out the second set, 21-6, and which that claimed gold.

As soon as the final ended, Trebert headed for treatment on an elbow injury ahead of his mixed doubles match.

'I knew what he was capable of – he's a very good player, certainly a player for the future for Guernsey.

'Hopefully he's got many more Island Games to come but I knew if I could get on top of him as I did – I started slow but thought "come on, get the old legs going a little bit" – once I started to get into that he didn't really have any answers.'

There was a golden flourish for Guernsey though.

In the concluding mixed doubles final Trebert and Chloe Le Tissier went down in straight sets – 9-21, 19-21 – to team colleagues Ove Svejstrup and Elena Johnson.

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