Beere repays backers with silver medal down under

After putting in a major crowdfunding campaign to raise the money for the three-week trip, she missed out on the knockouts in both singles and pairs at the World Championships.

But her additional stay to contest the Champion of Champions yielded a stunning silver, which she called ‘beyond expectations’.

Emotions were already flying high when she guaranteed at least bronze by winning her quarter-final 5-4, 6-1 against familiar Switzerland player Marianne Kuenzle.

‘That was something that meant so much to me, after all the fundraising and the people that have sponsored me to allow me to stay on that extra week,’ she said.

‘I felt like I had repaid them.’

She subsequently battled past Malaysia’s Nurul Alyani Jamil 3-7, 4-2 and 6-4 in the semi-final.

That included playing an ‘absolute bomb’ to swing the deciding set.

‘If I had to play 100 times over, I don’t think I would have got that again.’

However, the USA’s Anne Nunes proved one hurdle too many as she won a scrappy final 5-2, 3-4, 6-3.

Beere is back in Guernsey and straight into a well-deserved break but admits that, in this time, she will be reconsidering her future in the sport.

‘I have competed at international level, whether it’s England or Guernsey, for 25 years.

‘It has taken a toll on me physically and mentally, and I have missed out on some really big family commitments and things because there’s something I want to play at.’

Her silver medal revisited previous outcomes at events like the 2009 Champion of Champions and, of course, last year’s Commonwealth Games.

But Beere would not particularly mind going out a ‘bridesmaid’, as she puts it.

‘I just want to go and perform the best I can. If I bring back a medal, that’s great.

‘Yes, we all want gold medals, but in the grand scheme of things to have no sponsorship, no coach as such, no training modules in place, so I think to go away and do what I do is pretty damn good.’