From July 31st until August 7th the VIII gay games took part in Cologne.
For us this was a very special week and we met wonderful people from all over the world who stayed with us here at Domstern hotel for the competitions.
More than 9500 athletes were taking part in the games and celebrated the principles of participation, inclusion and personal best. The atmosphere here in the city was really amazing.
For us one of the nicest things was, that our guests stayed the whole week, so we really got to know them,
each morning the latest results were shared during breakfast, pictures shown and of course medals presented!
And it can be said that Hotel Domstern was extremly successful concerning medals:
Here some of the amazing results:
Heidrun Grote from our front office team was definitely one of the most sucessful athletes winning a total of 6!! gold medals. On the picture below you can see her with the gold medal in the 400m run,where she competed together with Daniela Osiander from Australia, one of our guests winning silver!
Also winning a gold medal in cycling (for Criterium and silver in the road race) was Paul Oram from Hillsborough, Ct. Counting the number of medals Domsterns US guests definitely were the most successful ones: besides Paul there were Daniel Didier and Thomas Wheeler who won silver in the Men`s Bowling doubles, while Chuck Muckle brought "home" silver in the singles and accomplished a fantastic 5th place together with Lance Ringel in the teams competition.
Renée Cafiero from the US had a lot of fun competing together with Isabelle Mouveaux from France who finally won 1 silver and 4 bronze medals in table tennis!
Henrik Hovmark from Denmark competing in Line Dance brought home 2 silver and 1 bronze medal,
while Sally Kilburg representing Canada won bronze in Pool Billard and Khati Hendry achieved her personal best in running.
 |
| Manfred, Khati, Sally (with her bronze medal) and Michael at the closing ceremony |
Also running (Half marathon) were Nicola Schulze from Germany and Michael, both finished in a fantastic time below 2 hours!
And it can be said that not only the medal winners but also everyone else had a great time, like Bill Helton from Chicago who achieved his personal best in Volleyball, Scott Rankin from England who took part in the football competition or James Maloney who simply came as a spectator.
Sylvie Najosky from France was here to do some research work for the "Festival du film" in St. Etienne.We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you, it was so nice having you as guests with us,
we had a wonderful week and it really was hard to say good bye!
Our very special thanks go to Chuck and Lance who awarded Michael and Manfred representing the whole Domstern staff with an extra medal for making their stay enjoyable!
We really appreciate this gesture and we will always cherish our medal which will remind us of a very special week that we shared with very special people from all over the world!
We hope to see you all again some time in the future.
Best wishes from Cologne
Michael & Manfred
