Nederlands
Padel is a fast growing and unique racket sport. As it continues to develop in Western Europe, a growing number of entrepreneurs and innovators embrace the sport and give further impulse to it. A new example of this trend is de PadelBak, a project initiated by Jerry Huijsman and Carel Weber, in partnership with the Municipality of Rotterdam and Padel Service Nederland, among others.
According to Jerry Huijsman, cities face the challenge of staying attractive to business and citizens in general. Additionally, the climate change is a fact and the rising level of the water level is an issue present in the agenda of any government. City infrastructure must be designed to deal with these issues. With this in mind, in October 2015, Jerry though of implementing his floating platform “AquaDock” as a building base for sports. In his original plans, he considered a number of other sports as candidates to utilize it. But he got a tip from a family member living in Valencia: “… consider padel…”, he was told. Given its growing popularity, broad target group and trendy image, he decided that padel was the right sport. Another important consideration was that during play the ball would not fall in the water; it always stays withing the enclosures of the court.
Jerry’s first step was to build a mini-padel court on his AquaDock, which he called “PadelBak”. The project was presented at the World Port Days 2016 in Rotterdam. It was welcomed enthusiastically by the Municipality of Rotterdam and the sports community in general.
Given its success, Jerry is planning to move forward further with Padel. He believes that Padel will be as big in Holland as it is in Spain. He promises to build a full size padelcourt on a floating platform and organize a padel tournament in 2017. It will be located near the city center of Rotterdam.
Photos Source: Jerry Huijsman / Peter Amerika
