The Oostende Tournament caters for around 2000 players each year so the fact that 50 or so English Players were visiting in different groups was a drop in the ocean.
What was particularily good to see was that all the different groups came away with medals
Jane Barella brought some London Region boys
James Smith won the Under 13’s Boys event, Ethan Walsh won the Under 11 Boys on the Friday. On the Sunday James Smith added a Bronze in D Speciall. Tyla Anderson was also successful on the Sunday taking Bronze in C Speciall
Helen Lower and Adrian Pilgrim brought a group of Boys and Girls from the West Midlands and again there were medals to be had.
Charlotte Spencer won the Grade C event and was second only to Katherin Muhlbach of Germany, the world no 60 Under 21 Girl, in the Under 21 Girls, Abbie Milwain was 4th in that competition.
Adrian gave up coaching for a while to take the Bronze Medal in the Over 40 Mens, this was all on Friday.
George Falcus excelled on the Sunday collecting the Silver medal in Class D Speciall as did Jamie Davis who took the Bronze in C Speciall
Abdul Wuraola was leading a group from the Dulwich Club and they made hay on the medals, Abdul was fourth in the Over 40 Men but the boys excelled
Nathaniel Smith took a bronze in Class E on Friday and added another Gold on the Sunday winning Class E+NG. Shaquille Dixon was first in the D4/D6 class with Jake Mitchell taking the bronze. Olamide Wuraola was third in the Cadet Competition and Shaquille Dixon took fourth in that as well
In addition Sandra Rider and Sue Collier and Dot and Malc Macfarlane were there as well, Sue let a lead slip in the fifth game of the over 40 Ladies to take a silver medal and Sandra Rider took the Over 60 Ladies Singles Gold. Dot Macfarlane took the bronze medal in this event and took another bronze in the Class C following up on Charlotte’s Gold in the same event.
Monday and Tuesday wre the team events and more success was to come Anthony and Grahame Barella took the Under 21 Boys Team Gold. Sandra Rider and Sue Collier took the Ladies Team Gold.
In the Under 13 Team event London ruled, James Smith and Ethan Walsh took the Gold
While in the Cadets it was the turn of Jack Merton and Pardoe Kester to take Gold with the Dulwich pairing of Olamide Wuraola and Shaquille Dixon taking the Bronze medal.
Bye the bye, in between on the Saturday evening Olympic double Bronze Medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov took the 14th Flanders ITT Oostende Masters with wins over qualifier Lars Heilscher in 4 straight games, Bojan Tokic in 6 games and in the final he overcame German teammate Patrick Baum who came through in 5 games against both Jean-Michel Saive of Belgium and Chen Weixing of Austria.
Ovtcharov won the final -8,8,9,-10,11,5
As medal tables are the in thing these days this is the one for Oostende,
England, second in number of medals and gold medals
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | |
| BEL | 33 | 35 | 29 | 97 |
| ENG | 15 | 5 | 12 | 32 |
| NED | 9 | 2 | 3 | 14 |
| FRA | 7 | 5 | 4 | 16 |
| GER | 5 | 3 | 6 | 14 |
| EST | 5 | 1 | 4 | 10 |
| SCO | 3 | 7 | 2 | 12 |
| WAL | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| SUI | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| POL | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| IND | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| ISL | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| LUX | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| COL | 0 | 1 | o | 1 |
| AUT | o | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| SVN | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Doubles count as one medal except where 2 countries are involved, Team events count as two medals, singles events as one
For all the results and loads more photographs visit www.ttcdriveoostende.be