Stonehouse’s table tennis star Billy Shilton and Martin Perry continued their promising doubles partnership by taking gold in men’s class 14 on the final day of the ITTF World Para Challenger Podgorica in Montenegro.
Shilton and Perry started well against Aleksej Radukic and Luka Vidovic from Serbia, taking the first set 11-6 and they edged the second 13-11 and the third 14-12 to win 3-0. They were 3-0 winners against Lee Se Ho from Korea Republic and Cole Rothenberger from the USA and secured top position in their group and a bye into the semi-finals with a 3-1 win against Gonzalo Rodriguez from Spain and Vikas Thakur from India.
The British pair came through a tough five-set battle against Ben Despineux from Belgium and independent neutral athlete Maksim Nazarkin, taking the deciding set 11-7 after Despineux and Nazarkin had twice come back to level. That took them through to the final against Jean Paul Montanus and Yannick Paredis, the European bronze medallists from Netherlands and they had to fight hard again after the Dutch pair had taken a tight third set 13-11 to lead 2-1. Perry and Shilton took the fourth 11-4 to level the match and secured a 3-2 win and the gold, 11-6 in the deciding set.
“Really happy to have won gold here,” said Shilton. “It was a tough match in the final – they are obviously a good pair – and also in the semi-final. It’s not easy to play against pairs from mixed nations – I think it can be quite unpredictable, and you never know what is going to happen. On the whole the partnership is going well – we’ve got to the final the last three times we’ve played together and it’s nice to take the title here. It’s given me a lot of confidence going into Slovenia – I wasn’t happy with the level I played in the singles, but I had a good turnaround in the doubles, so I’m really pleased. Martin and I with Rushy (BPTT head coach Andrew Rushton) have put a lot of effort and time into perfecting this doubles pair and even then, there were points where I didn’t feel like we played our best and we still managed to win. So, I think when we get to the point when we are playing our best it will be good to see where our level is at.”
