I have just caught my breath from our trip to Tunisia.
As I am the secretary of the African Bridge Federation, I was sponsored by the ABF to attend the zonals and needless to say help with the running of the tournament and attend the various meetings.
It was a fabulous venue and a great tournament. Our Open team certainly did us proud by taking first place and the gold medal and will be representing Africa Zone 8 together with Egypt.
Our teams always stood out in their uniform of black or white T-shirts with the South African Flag and we were all welcomed with open arms by the other teams. Of course, all the other teams mostly spoke French and this made things a little awkward, but we all managed to make ourselves understood.
At the opening ceremony our president, Bernard Pascal, addressed the players in French and Arabic, but at the same time had a powerpoint presentation running in English which was so very well done and we didn’t feel in the least bit left out.
Both Reunion and Egypt put in a bid for the 2013 zonals and it was decided that Reunion should have a chance to host the event. By the way, I was horrified to see that the budget was for €39,000, which as you know equates to almost R400,000. That certainly put paid to any thoughts of South Africa hosting such an event unless we had a very generous sponsor.
I must thank Sid for the superb coverage of the event. Results were out almost immediately as well as bulletins were available for all to read to keep in touch with our players.
Finally... what is the World Championships all about? Read it here.
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