MBAT Day 1

This is the diary entry from Friday 8 May:

2 bronze medals and the first football team in IMD history to proceed to the quarter finals! That is the result of the first day at the annual MBA tournament. The Bronze Medals were secured by Christian Cuenot [France] and Liesbeth Bakker [The Netherlands] in Pétanque and by Joe Nai [Hong Kong/The Netherlands] in Climbing. I have had the honor of playing on the football team today, where we so far are undefeated. It is a minor detail that we did not win any games either, but the two draws were enough to get us into the quarter finals which will be played tomorrow.

On top of all of this we have had people participating in sports as exotic and different as rowing, volleyball, basketball, fencing, chess, golft, table tennis, baby foot (table football) and then I have probably even forgotten af few. Tomorrow we will add Tug-of-War and Ultimate Frisbee to the list and continue many of the others.

The IMD guys do stand out a bit. We are on average 31 years of age, whereas most of the other 'kids' range from 23 to 27. We tell ourselves that we just bring that much more experience to the game. Whatever that is worth in sports I am not so sure. All I know is that my legs feel very heavy after today's matches and that they (the legs) will complain when I start warming them up again tomorrow.

We will get some more pictures to you later, but here is a couple to start with.



Andres Akamine [Peru] with his son David. David is one of the two children that have joined the MBAT. On the right it is Stone Gao [China].



Waiting for the bus this morning. Nicolas Denef [Belgium] is making the absolute most of his time.



The IMD football team in this years MBAT. We are greatly assisted by veterans Paul Holmes (goal keeper), who is from last years class and, and Chris Eaborn (standing far left) who plays with us every Sunday in Parc De Milan.



Relaxing a bit after the first footbal game. From left Oren Yehudai [Israel], Paul De Hek [The Netherlands], Simon Sundbøll [Denmark] and Joost Mackor [The Netherlands].