Gerard Gill of St. Adolphe has been busy practicing his swing. In June, he’ll be participating in the United States’ National Senior Games being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where senior athletes from around the continent will gather from June 14–25. At 61 years of age, Gill will be competing in three categories of badminton—singles, doubles, and mixed.
The Games features competition in 20 sports between men and women 50 years of age and over. They take place every second year and are hosted in a variety of American cities. According to the Games’ website, it’s “the largest multi-sport event in the world for seniors”—and it’s been running for more than 30 years.
“I want to have fun and make a few friends, but I want to win a few games in each of my events,” says Gill. “That’s what I’ll shoot for.”
The 2017 games, held in Alabama, hosted well over 10,000 athletes. Gill says this year they’re anticipating registration to be around 13,000. Gill expects that in his age category, 60 to 64, he’ll be competing round-robin-style with about 50 athletes.
“It’s going to be a lot of games in a concentrated period,” Gill admits. “I guess that would be my concern, a little bit. When I play here, I tend to play [one] day and give my arm a rest [the next day]. [At the games] it will be every day. I’ve got a good physiotherapist, so she’s been helping me along, too.”
In his many years of playing badminton, Gill has never suffered an injury. He attributes that to his regular physiotherapy maintenance sessions.
Gill spent his entire career as a teacher and principal in Winnipeg and around Canada. In most of the schools where he worked, he also coached badminton.
“I was in my mid-twenties teaching at a school in Alberta, and they needed someone to coach badminton and I had just played in high school,” recalls Gill. “I started coaching then and I’ve been coaching pretty much ever since.”
His career also includes coaching for the 2013 Manitoba Winter Games and occasionally filling in at the Rady Centre in Winnipeg. In the past few years, Gill has been practicing for the big U.S. competition with the St. Pierre Badminton Club. In the winter months, he keeps his game sharp in Phoenix where he and his wife Maria vacation every year.
Arizona is also where Gill tried out and qualified for the Games.
“You had to play in a qualifying tournament,” Gill says. “In Arizona, they have something called the Arizona Senior Olympics and you had to go to that tournament. You had to finish in the top three in your age category in your events. I was lucky enough to do that.”
Gill also stays fit by running three times a week around his St. Adolphe neighbourhood. His life goal is to still be playing badminton in his eighties and nineties. He also hopes to pass his passion on to his two granddaughters, Susie and Lily, who are 10 and 11 years of age. In addition to playing with them on a backyard court, he and his wife enjoy taking the girls to local tournaments.
“There’s a junior national badminton tournament going on right now at the Sports for Life Centre in downtown Winnipeg and we took Lily on Sunday to watch some of the 12- and 13-year-olds,” Gill says. “It’s just a phenomenal level of badminton for young athletes.”
Gill asserts that badminton is the fasted racket sport in the world
“The shuttle [birdie] reaches speeds of over 400 kilometers on a smash,” he says. “[It] speeds up really quickly, but it also has drag—it looks like a parachute—so it loses speed quickly, too. So it’s the agility, speed, finesse, and power that makes it a beautiful game.”
While Gill hopes to place in the top three, it won’t qualify him for the World Series of Badminton. For that, competitors are required to go through a formal written application process with a country’s national badminton association. That level of achievement, he says, still feels rather daunting.
“In other areas of the world—say, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Denmark, the U.K.—badminton is as big as hockey is here,” he points out. “The elite athletes in those countries would be treated the same as Scheifele or Wheeler with the Jets and they play in arenas as big as the MTS Centre.”
For now, Gill will apply his competitive spirit closer to home, making new friends with similar interests along the way.
“That’s part of the beauty of the game in a way,” Gill says. “Playing badminton has a social aspect to it. Making friends and having fun. Building relationships is as important to me in badminton as the sport itself.”