In the Mixed the gold goes to Spanish ‘babies’, silver for Cassetta-Sussarello

Spain won the first gold medal in padel at the European Games. In the ‘Mixed’ the very young Noa Canovas, 18, and Daniel Santigosa (19) defeated the Italians Marco Cassetta and Giulia Sussarello in two sets (6/3, 7/5).

In the first set, Spain got the break at 3-1 and was able to keep the lead until 6-3, also taking advantage of some Italian mistakes. The first set was well-balanced, but the number of points won by the Spaniards – 29 to 22 – and the quality of their responses (42% of the points won) shifted the balance towards Canovas-Santigosa.  In the second set, Spain ran away again on 3:1, thanks to a break inspired by Canovas and realised by Santigosa as usual. Italy, however, reacted immediately, counter-breaking thanks to two points by Sussarello and a couple of mistakes by Santigosa. Shortly afterwards Santigosa with two overbearing conclusions gave Spain the lead and dragged the team to the first match point. Cassetta reacted and pulled acrobatics and three winning shots out of his repertoire. Italy climbed back up to 5-5 but in the end the Spanish team had more and brought home the gold.  The total points won – 72 to 60 – confirmed the final score: 6-3 7-5 for Spain, which took home the gold medal.

The two spanish stars were the image of happiness after the award ceremony: “It is a unique feeling, a dream come true,” said Daniel Santigosa. “The main difficulty was to adapt the technical and tactical plans to this speciality that is new to us, but I must say that we enjoyed every single match”.

“I am so happy, the mixed category was a completely new for us but all the preparation we did led to this great result,” added 18-year-old Noa Canovas. “On a physical level it was very hard for me, as I was coming from a very long bronze final this morning. We played on the court for almost three hours and we struggled a lot.  But I knew it was the last match of the week for me, so I gave everything to win“.