Stepney Green badminton squad among the medals

Tower Hamlets’ youngsters were in sparkling form at the Balfour Beatty London Youth Games Spring Finals at Crystal Palace this week.

The borough was represented by Stepney Green College in the schools’ badminton finals, as around 2,500 youngsters from across the capital competed in eight different sports over two days at the National Sports Centre.

Each of the schools who competed in the badminton finals had come through a tough qualifying competition in February and there was a high standard of badminton throughout.

And Tower Hamlets won bronze behind gold medalist Sutton and Redbridge, who took silver, with team manager Giovanni Giordano saying: “Just being here was the target really. I mean we’ve already exceeded what we expected so just to get to this round was a positive.

“It’s massive just to go up to the next level just to show the boys and experience this kind of competition.”

Medals were presented to players by British ex-athlete Jo Mersh.