Mark Whitehouse, was selected to represent Great Britain at the 2015 World University Games in South Korea. Read his account of the games below.

This summer I was one of six tennis players (three male and three female) selected to represent Great Britain at the 2015 World University Games (WUGs) in Gwangju, South Korea.

The event is also known as the universiade, and it is held every two years. Anyone who is currently a student at university, or who graduated the year before is eligible to compete. Like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games it is a multi-sport competition and it has both summer and winter editions. In fact it is the second biggest sporting event after the Olympics, with nearly 10,000 athletes competing in Gwangju.

The tennis team left for South Korea on Sunday 28 June and we were the first sport to depart along with diving. After around 20 hours of travelling we finally arrived in the athlete’s village! This is where all the competitors and staff lived during their time at the universiade, and everyone was housed in high rise blocks of flats of about 25 floors. The Great Britain delegation occupied the top ten floors of our building, the rest of which we shared with team USA.

We had four days of training before the tennis tournament started, which was much needed as there was a lot to acclimatise to. We had the jet lag from the eight hour time difference to get over, but it was also incredibly humid all the time and pretty hot too which made it quite draining to play tennis in! The courts also bounced a lot higher than the surfaces we have in Britain, so the extra court time enabled us to adjust to the different conditions.

The opening ceremony of the games was held on the first Friday at the athletics stadium. All athletes and officials from every country (there were over 150 nations present) had to gather on a grass pitch outside the stadium to queue up for the walk in. We went in alphabetically, so as the United Kingdom we had to wait for four hours as we were one of the last to enter! The wait was worth every second though as the stadium crowd was packed and the atmosphere inside was unbelievable as we walked around the track. South Korea put on an at times slightly weird, but nonetheless spectacular show to officially open the games, which included the final handovers and lighting of the universiade torch (which started its journey in Paris)!

The next day the tournament started. Competing for Great Britain in the various events were:

• Olivia Nicholls, Loughborough University, women’s singles
•  Daneika Borthwick, Florida State University, women’s singles and women’s doubles
• Alex Walker, University of Bath, women’s doubles and mixed doubles
• Mark Whitehouse, Imperial College London, men’s singles
• Joe Salisbury, University of Memphis, men’s singles and men’s doubles
• Darren Walsh, Southern Methodist University, men’s doubles and mixed doubles

Our team was led by Alistair Higham (team manager) and Barry Scollo (team coach).

The standard at the games was incredibly high, and so unfortunately in the singles both Joe and I lost close matches in the third round, and Daneika and Olivia went down in epic battles against highly seeded opponents. In the women’s doubles we went out against a strong Russian pairing in another match that could have gone either way.This just meant we would focus our attention to supporting the remaining men’s and mixed doubles teams. After spending a few too many hours inventing chants to cheer between points, there was no doubt in which country had the best supporters at the tennis centre.

After coming through a nail biting third set match tie-break against Japan in the semi-finals, our men’s doubles pairing of Joe and Darren then took on Korea in the final with a huge partisan crowd watching on. They produced some brilliant tennis to come back from 6-8 down in the match tie-break to win 10-8 and seal gold for Great Britain! This was the first time Great Britain has won a gold medal in tennis for a decade at WUGs, which is a mark of what a great achievement it is. The next day Darren teamed up with Alex in the mixed doubles final, and they brought home a silver medal rounding off a hugely successful trip for the tennis team!

Great Britain won two other golds at this year’s universiade: Kelly Simm (Southampton Solent University) won the women’s individual all-around in the artistic gymnastics, and Jay Lelliott (University of Bath) won the men’s 400m freestyle in the swimming. Along with so many other tremendous performances across a variety of sports this resulted in Great Britain’s best medal haul at a WUGs in over a decade.

For me, besides watching my teammates win gold and silver the real highlight of the games was getting to meet athletes from so many different sports. There were 21 sports at the games, and Great Britain sent competitors in 12 of them. I met some awesome people that I would have never known otherwise, and we got to watch some world class sports that we’d never normally get the chance to see. Between all the practice, competition and supporting we saw some gymnastics, swimming, water polo and volleyball. I wish we could have gone to watch more sports, especially the rest of the Great Britain team, but it was a pretty intense two weeks nevertheless! 

On Monday 13 July we made the long journey back to London, rounding off the most incredible fortnight. I must give a massive thank you to all the athletes and staff, who made the experience truly unforgettable.  The BUCS summary of the event can be found on their website, and here is the official team GBR video of highlights during the games