Ramsbury TC's husband and wife team Lewis and Catherine Fletcher are guaranteed the chance to play for a mixed doubles medal at the 22nd Summer Deaflympics in Sofia, Bulgaria, after winning their quarter-final on Wednesday in straight sets.
Last year’s European mixed doubles bronze medallists powered to a straight sets win over China’s Jiali Shen and Xue-Liang Tang to move into Thursday’s semi-finals, with Catherine Fletcher now guaranteed to play for a medal in the women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.
Fourth seeds Fletcher and Fletcher, the three-time National mixed doubles champions, beat Shen and Tang 6-2, 6-0 to set up a semi-final against German top seeds and reigning European champions Heike Albrecht and Urs Breitenberger.
“After some mixed results for me earlier this week, it’s nice to get back to winning ways again,” said Lewis Fletcher. “After today’s win we are both looking forward to the semi tomorrow against the same German pairing we got so close to beating over three sets in the semi-finals of last year’s European Championships. They eventually went on to win gold and we won the bronze medal.”
Catherine Fletcher returned from the Taipei Deaflympics in 2009 having won gold in the mixed doubles.
Catherine will also bid to reach the women’s singles final on Thursday in Sofia when she plays world No. 1 Chiu-Mei Ho in her semi-final, while Friday’s penultimate day of play in Bulgaria will see her partner fellow Brit Bethany Brookes in the women's doubles bronze medal match.
Having beaten the Italian fourth seeds and Taipei 2009 Deaflympic bronze medallists in their quarter-final on Tuesday, Fletcher and Brookes found the going tough against second seeds Chiu-Mei Ho and Hsiu-Hsiang Ho in their women’s doubles semi-final, with the Chinese Taipei sisters and 2009 Deaflympic silver medallists advancing to another final 6-1, 6-2.
Fletcher and Brookes, the reigning women’s doubles National champions, will now play Taipei 2009 gold medallists and top seeds Albrecht and Verena Fleckenstein for the bronze medal.
Catherine and Lewis Fletcher are among five players selected by the Tennis Foundation to be members of the Great Britain squad of athletes for the 22nd Summer Deaflympics in Sofia. Play continues until 3 August, with medal matches taking place on Friday, 2 August and Saturday, 3 August.