Over 15,000 athletes participated in 45 sports, and across the 10 days of competition, participants won 7000 gold medals, 6500 silver medals, and 6000 bronze medals collectively.
And did they party? I'm just glad with that number on the last night that we weren't there. But we did attend three other nights and enjoyed ourselves.
For Active Aging Hub, we were represented in tennis and Pickleball. Certain tennis events were disappointing, as were the men's teams, where they grouped the 45+ and the 60+ together, which meant we played people 30 years our junior. The results were predictable. We will have our say to the organisers, as other entrants will. But it was much better in different events, and we won medals. It was a fantastic effort.
Nineteen tennis members, fifteen men and four ladies, represented AAH and stood out in their AAH / TTOD shirts. Thank you all for participating in such a big event and showing your presence. What a handsome group of men, and they gave it their all. I am so sorry, ladies; I forgot to get a group picture of all of you, but I have some individual ones.
I hope I have all the information now, but if I missed someone, please let me know.
Ladies Doubles 70+ Event, and our two wonderful and now talented tennis players, Kerryn Bridgman and Janice Cort, won the GOLD. What an achievement!
These may not be in time order.
Col Ahern won silver in the men's 75+ singles. If someone has a photo, please send it. This is a new Addition To the Blog that was missed on the first edition.
Col Ahern and Alan Brunner won GOLD in the Men's Doubles 75+ Fantastic Effort!
In the mixed doubles 65+, Mark Chester won silver with an allocated partner, and Paul Graham and Sue Lettmann won bronze in the same event.
In the Men's Doubles 70+, Milton Newstead and Ray Kieseker achieved a Bronze.
Then we went into the combined doubles, men's, and mixed teams, where we struck problems when playing against much younger players. The best we achieved, even against younger players in the Mixed teams, was fourth position, just missing the bronze, so it was still an outstanding effort. It is incredible that in those events, where we were in our proper age categories, we won medals, so we should, as we are good at all the tennis we play.
PICKLEBALL
Now, what an outstanding achievement was earned by our Pickleball Players, Helen Davey and Wendy Lawler, they are our star players from our Tuesday Session at Albion. They also played tennis with us on Thursday at 7 a.m. session and are excellent players.
They both won Gold in the singles matches, Helen in the 65+ category and Wendy in the 60+ category. Then, they teamed up to play doubles in the ladies' 60+ category.
ENTERTAINMENT
Now, with all these participants, it is not all activities; there is time for partying. They took over the Convention and Exhibition Centre and had some great bands.
On Tuesday Night, it was a Western Night with Line Dancing and a Mechanical Bull to prove that the Bull always wins. Thursday Night was Killer Queen, and Friday was a 90s Night. Check out the videos below.
The next Pan Pacific Games, scheduled for 2026, are confirmed. Rally your friends. We need to negotiate with the organisers for the next event to have players in the correct categories. If they can do it for some, they can do it for all. We should be proud of our age and what we are achieving.
Next event: November 6 to 15, 2026!
I think we should all congratulate Barry on such an achievement . It was only a few years ago that the tennis group was up to 12 persons playing Monday arvo at Toowong ONLY. Look at what has been achieved under Barry's vision. Tennis Groups Monday to Saturday with double up on Wed and Thursday. Pickle Ball , Singing, dancing and great socials. None was possible without Barry. Thanks also to the AAH committee and the session leaders. Yours in tennis Col Ahern