British No.1 Tia Norton says being forced to train at home instead of in Barcelona due to Brexit restrictions will not inhibit her progress up the world rankings.
The 19-year-old star enjoyed a stellar 2022, receiving the LTA’s first ever padel award, winning the inaugural FIP London Rise Open and coming tantalisingly close to leading GB women to a place at the World Championship finals in Doha. Her ranking also rocketed to within touching distance of a top-100 place.
Yet there have been frustrations with the post-Brexit landscape meaning Norton has only been able to spend 90 days out of every 180 at her Barcelona training bolthole. Instead, the Warwick-born ace had to utilise a Swedish visa option in order to continue rubbing shoulders with the cream of the continent.
But with the quality of players and depth of playing pool steadily improving in the UK, Norton reckons her Harbour Club Chelsea base – where she trains with fellow GB stars Abi Tordoff and Catherine Rose and has coaching sessions with the women’s national coaching team of Alvaro Guerrero and Max Lutostsanski – has banished her post-Brexit Blues forever.
Norton said: “After Brexit I was put in a situation where I had a visa restriction and could only spend 90 days in every 180 days in the EU. That was very restrictive for me as the main training base for padel is of course Spain, which is in the EU, and all the main tournaments are outside the UK and in the EU along with all the top players.
“Ultimately that is why I was living in Barcelona at the start of 2022 as it’s where the best training and the best players are. But I also managed to secure a Swedish visa last year which allowed me to live in Sweden for a couple of months.”
The visa came about after the World Championship qualifiers in Derby where Norton played Swedish international Amanda Girdo. She asked Norton to enter a Swedish tournament and as a result, the British star successfully applied for a wild card for the World Padel Tour.
Norton explains: “I stayed in Sweden training and playing with Amanda which meant I had a good amount of time left to stay in the EU. That visa has now expired and we are back to the basics of 90 days in the EU for every 180 which is frustrating.
“The positive side is that I am continuing my pre-season training at the Harbour Club Chelsea. The quality of training and player there is great and getting better all the time.
“Now I have a much more solid training set-up in London and I know that the LTA Performance manager [Matt Stanforth] starts on January 16. I have been in communication with him and the plans for the UK are huge.
“So there is now not so much pressure to be Spain based. Plus, after being in Barcelona for so long I understand my game and I know the areas I need to improve and how to go about that in terms of the correct drills and exercises. Max and Alvaro are a great help and l am grateful to them for their time and help.
“Now is the main block of my pre-season training which started Monday [January 2] so this is a key period. By Thursday my body was in bits but I’m really enjoying the start I have made to 2023 in the UK.”
Norton’s first competitive outing of the year will be at the LTA Grade One in Yorkshire in February partnering Amy Gibson from Essex.
“I am excited to see how that will go,” she said. “It is great to have that target coming into view and being able to put timelines in place and tailor my training accordingly.”
While the positives from last year have been abundant for Tia there is one negative that she is burning to put right in 2023: “All the positives I achieved throughout the year were very satisfying and really I fell in love with padel even more, so last year was definitely a dream lived!
“When it comes to GB it was a really close call at the World qualifiers. It has done nothing but motivate us. The players have already talked as a group and we are determined to progress from last year. At the European Championships later in 2023 we are absolutely determined to do as well as we can.
“I feel very positive about us going into the Europeans. We have much more depth, motivation is high and the experience we gained from the qualifiers at Derby gives us a great foundation in this respect.
“On the team last year only two of us remained from the previous year in Qatar [herself and Hansie Ruddick]. I definitely feel the team is getting a lot stronger and more compact and there is huge motivation between all the girls to grow as a group and achieve.”
