Nicola Smith

Nicola Patricia SmithMBE, née Gardener (born 28 April 1949), is a world champion English bridge player. She has many successes to her credit in more than 30 years of international competition, initially as Nicola Gardener. Currently (August 2016) she ranks first among Women World Grand Masters by world masterpoints (MP) that decay annually, and second to Jill Meyers by placing points that do not.

Nicola Gardener was a member of the 1981 Great Britain team that won the world teams championship for women, the Venice Cup; and (now as Nicola Smith) the team that defended its title in 1985, when it was established as a regular odd-years world championship. She was also on the 2nd-place England team in 2013. She played in eight successive World Team Olympiads, which were held every four years until 2004, winning the silver medal on four occasions. She has won the European Women's Teams on seven occasions (1975, 1979, 1981, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2012), on the first five occasions for Great Britain and on the last two for England. She won the Generali World Women's Individual event in 1994. In 2008, she was part of the English Ladies team that won the Gold at the first World Mind Sport Games (the successor competition to the Olympiad) in Beijing, China. partnering Sally Brock. The English team retained their title in 2012, Smith again partnering Brock. In 2014 she and Brock played together as part of the England team in that year's European Women's Championship. The team finished second, thereby winning the silver medal and qualifying for the finals of the 2015 World Championships. In that event the England team won the bronze medal. This was Smith's sixteenth world medal, the most won by any woman. In 2016 she was a member of the England team that won the European Women's Championship. This was her eighth win, a record.

She was only sixteen when she played in her first international tournament, at Deauville, winning the teams event in a team which included her father, Nico Gardener, and the young Paul Chemla. She made her representative international debut in the European Championships in Estoril in 1970, partnering Dorothy Shanahan and finishing fourth.

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