Britain’s first Premier Padel event ended the way most people expected and delivered a twist nobody saw coming. Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia, the world’s top-ranked men’s pair, won the London P1 at Olympia – but it took a deciding set to get there. On the women’s side, an 18-year-old wrote herself into the record books.
We covered the build-up in our fan guide to Premier Padel London and the wider context in our original announcement piece. This is how the week played out.
Coello and Tapia survive a final-day scare
The men’s final was the rivalry UK padel had been promised for months: Coello and Tapia against Alejandro Galán and Federico Chingotto, the pair closest to dethroning them all season. Coello and Tapia took the first set 6-3 on the back of an early break, looking every bit the favourites. Galán and Chingotto responded by raising their level sharply, taking the second set 7-5 to force a decider.
The third set stayed tight until the closing stages, when Coello and Tapia found the break they needed in the return game at 6-5 to close out the match 7-5. It was their eighth title of the 2026 season – a number that says as much about their dominance of the tour as the final scoreline does about how hard Galán and Chingotto made them work for it.
For a first-ever event on British soil, it was the result the organisers would have wanted: two of the sport’s biggest names, going the distance, in front of a full house.
Calvo becomes Premier Padel’s youngest-ever champion
The standout story of the week belonged to the women’s draw. Claudia Fernández and Martina Calvo beat top seeds Gemma Triay and Delfi Brea 7-5, 6-3 in the final – but the scoreline undersells what the result meant. At 18 years, one month and four days old, Calvo became the youngest player to win a Premier Padel title, breaking the record set by Andrea Ustero in Bordeaux the previous year by 20 days. Fernández and Calvo also became the youngest pair to win a title on the tour.
The pair had lost to the same Triay-Brea partnership in a final in Pretoria just a week earlier. Facing the world No.1s again in London, they reversed the result – a rapid turnaround that suggests this result was not a one-off.
More than 20,000 through the door
Attendance was the number Premier Padel and the LTA cared most about, and it landed well: more than 20,000 spectators passed through Olympia’s Grand Hall across the tournament week. For a sport that most UK fans have only ever watched on a phone screen or played on a Tuesday night, filling a venue that size for six days running marks a clear shift in where British padel now sits.
British No.1 Christian Medina Murphy, who won his first-round match to keep home interest alive early in the week before bowing out to higher-ranked opposition, called the crowds “amazing news” for the sport’s development in this country. It is hard to argue – a full house watching elite padel in west London was not something anyone could have booked five years ago.
If you missed the build-up, our guide to how the tour works explains the tier system and why a P1 – one step below a Major – still means the full elite field. And if Olympia has whetted your appetite for watching more of the sport at home, the how to watch padel guide covers scoring, tactics, and the pairs worth following through the rest of the season.
The British wildcards had their moment too
Eight British players had wildcards into the main draw or qualifying, and Medina Murphy’s opening win gave the week an early home story to follow. He lost his second match to a higher-ranked pair, which was always the likely outcome against a 48-strong world-class men’s field, but getting a home player through a round at a P1 on debut is not nothing. GB No.1 women’s pair Catherine Rose and Aimee Gibson and the other wildcards also gained rare ranking-points experience against the level they will need to reach if Britain wants a home player in the later rounds next time.
While the pros played at Olympia, five London clubs ran their own festival alongside it. London Padel Week turned the same seven days into open coaching, racket demos, and social sessions across the city – proof that a P1 tournament can pull the whole local scene into its orbit, not just the spectators with a ticket to the Grand Hall.
What it means for UK padel
One tournament will not reshape a sport overnight. What it changes is what feels possible: kids who queued for autographs outside Olympia this week now have a home-soil memory of watching the best players in the world, not just a YouTube clip. Clubs across the country will have had a version of the conversation London Padel Week was built around – padel as something to watch as well as play.
The LTA and Premier Padel have already signalled this is intended as a multi-year fixture rather than a one-off. If the crowd numbers from this first edition hold, London looks set to keep its place on the calendar – and Britain’s players, coaches, and fans get another shot at it next year.
Full results and the official draw are available at padelfip.com.