Hanna Maddock is back in the GB women’s team for next week’s FIP Euro Padel Cup and has been preparing for Madrid by clocking up the air miles, grafting hard… and playing beach volleyball!
Lanzarote-based Hanna was injured for last year’s European Padel Championships in Sardinia, but has earned a recall to the Great Britain team for this year’s rebranded, expanded Euros in the Spanish capital by grinding out good performances in FIP Tour and domestic tournaments since the turn of the year.
GB women’s captains Libby Fletcher and Agustin Gomez Silingo have selected Hanna alongside established group Aimee Gibson, Catherine Rose, Tia Norton, Lisa Phillips and Abigail Tordoff, plus 15-year-old debutante Rosie Quirk and another newcomer in Laura Jackson.
The GB men’s and women’s teams head out to Madrid on Tuesday (8 July) for a couple of days’ training, bonding and acclimatising (it’s going to be very hot), before beginning their campaign in Phase 2 of the reformatted competition on Friday at Madrid’s Padel G24 indoor arena. Read our FIP Euro Padel Cup guide.
Hanna, who turns 26 in two weeks’ time, has pressed the accelerator on her competitive padel career since the turn of the year, playing in eight FIP tournaments since March.
“I’ve really tried to prove myself to the team and have played as many tournaments as possible in the build-up to get my ranking up,” Hanna told The Padel Paper.
“Raising my level and ranking is a constant motivation but getting into the GB team again is definitely a big factor, because representing your country and playing in the Europeans is the highlight of the year.
“Now I’m selected, I’m training even more because I want to prove that they made the right decision in selecting me!”
Hanna joined the rest of the GB players at a special training camp with the Dutch team in Holland last week before competing in the FIP Silver Utrecht where she and Alice Keddie lost a closely-fought round of 32 match against (ironically) her GB team-mate Lisa Phillips and Marta Barrera, one of Hanna’s regular training partners in Lanzarote!
“I’ve been travelling so much to loads of tournaments — I was basically on the road the whole month of May,” she reveals. “You’re travelling from one country to another, sleeping at people’s houses, hotels or Air BnBs, you don’t eat that well and you do get run down. But it’s worth it when you go into a huge tournament like the Euros feeling well prepared and match fit.”
GB join the FIP Euro Padel Cup in its second phase, with the four big guns — Spain, Italy, Portugal and France — not joining the fray until an as-yet unscheduled third phase, called ‘The Final 8’, later in the year.
“I’m not so keen on this change of format,” Hanna says. “Previously, all the countries would be there together, you get to see all the nations play and we’d fight for our place over a long week. This time, it has been divided up, which I don’t like as much. We’re only playing over a weekend, which is quite sad, but we’ll see how it goes.”
Prior to her injury last year, Hanna competed in CrossFit, which she has now cut down to a coupe of sessions a week. She has, however, started playing beach volleyball at home in the Canary Islands, which she feels has complemented her padel and gym training.
“Beach volleyball really helps me with the mental side of padel,” she reveals. “Having another sport makes me enjoy padel even more and stops it from becoming too overwhelming, so I do that when I get time off the padel court.
“It also helps physically because it’s such a demanding sport. Running in the sand helps me get in better shape for my padel too.”
Good luck to Hanna and both British teams in Madrid at the FIP Euro Padel Cup!
You can watch live coverage from eight courts at the indoor Padel G24 in Madrid on the FIP YouTube channel, results and draws on the FIP website as well as our in-depth coverage on The Padel Paper.
