INFOGRAPHICS – Halfway between squash and tennis, this racket sport never ceases to appeal. The world elite has an appointment in Toulouse this weekend for a round of the World Padel Tour.
Invented at the end of the 1960s by a Mexican who quickly imported it to the Costa del Sol, a region bathed in sunshine, padel (not to be confused with paddle, which is practiced on water) has been known for a craze in Spain and various Spanish-speaking countries. In France, it has been steadily falling behind since the early 2000s and the number of players (currently 150,000 and 1,000 courts) has been growing since the French Tennis Federation obtained the ministerial delegation in 2014. Spain has become the absolute reference in terms of Padel: at least 4 million practitioners and 10,000 courts It is the second sport practiced behind football and now ahead of tennis. In all, 12 million padel players are claimed worldwide, half of them in Europe (1 million in Sweden, 0.9 million in Italy) while Argentina declares 2 million. Padel is the racket sport that is currently evolving the most in the world…
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