Dear Friends and Supporters...
My email sendouts have been non-existant since the Olympics this past summer. For this, I apologize. I hope that all of you that I haven't been in contact with have been doing well and thriving! :)
Just a quick note to let you know that my life has been going well and I am healthy (currently no injuries) and happy. I was injured for most of the early fall, and didn't really find my rhythm until just recently. I hurt my lower abdominal muscles whilst training prior to the Olympics. They healed up before the big games, but came back with a vengeance in September and I was really in a lot of pain for some weaks. Even simple tasks like getting out of bed and walking around were painful. I was back to my full training routine by mid October and was VERY much enjoying actually having a longish period to build up the training. This was a huge contrast to the Olympic qualifying year where I was on the road constantly, which took away from really being able to take my fitness and strength to the next level.
I had some successful events in the past few months, the most recent of which was this past weekend in Montreal, the Canadian National Championships. It was a very memorable event for me as it is almost surely (I will never say never) my last experience competing at the nationals. The first time I played these national champs was in 1996, when they were held in Ottawa. Since then, I competed in this tournament ten times. It's a little bit scary to think that I'm now one of the older players on the Canadian badminton scene, when I can still clearly remember those early years, and some of the great (and not-so-great) matches I played along the way...
I played one of my very best matches this past weekend in the final of the Canadian Championships to take the men's singles title for the sixth time. It was one of those dream matches, where everything, all the years of training and experience came together in the performance of a lifetime. In the final, I played against David Snider, who won the nationals last year. At the age of 20, he is extremely strong and fast and put up a very strong fight for most of match. The final score was 21-11, 21-15, but could have easily been much closer if you saw many of the rallies. Seeing as he is young and fresh, he may have had something left in the tank, but for me, I had to really push myself to the limits, often diving around the court to return his big jump smashes.
So that was that. Moving forward, I've got a busy international tournament schedule in February and March. I will be competing in four international events in a row: the Austrian International, German Open, Croatian Internationa and finally the Swiss Open. These will be my first international events in a long, long time and I am really looking forward to being on tour again. Following that will be the Canadian International in April and then a big tour in Asia in the summer. After that, we will see what happens......
Wishing you all the best for now!
Sincerely,
Andrew
ANDREW ROBERT DABEKA
(c) 613.222.3302
www.AndrewDabeka.caPrevious emails:Aug 23, Aug 18Aug 15, Aug 13, Aug12, Aug 10, Aug 8, Aug 7, Aug 5, Aug 3, July 13, July 12, July 2, May 13, May 11, Apr 19, Apr 6, Mar 30, Mar 25, Mar 13, Mar 6, Feb 19, Jan 23, Jan 21, Dec 14, Nov 25, Nov 17, Nov 1, Oct 24, Oct 9, Sept 29, Sept 8, Sept 1, Aug 14, Jult 31 and July 10, 2007
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