Cambridge sisters challenge you to a Duel by inventing new racquet sport
Looking for a new sport to play that doesn’t require a court or pitch at a given time, one that doesn’t need specific clothing or large bags to carry around? Then Duel might be just the activity for you.
Created by Cambridge-based sisters, Avallon and Honour Constable, who first had the idea when they were around the ages of 13 and 11, Duel involves two compact, specially-designed racquets, a shuttlecock, and a time and location of your choice.
Avallon, who has just finished sixth form at St Mary’s, says that the pair “just wanted the wellness benefits of racquet sport – glowing skin, feeling good and longevity – without giving up hours of their day to get them”.She says that they didn’t want “the old racquet sport culture of paying annual memberships, booking courts, changing clothes and carrying a full-sized racquet around in their already-too-small bags”.
Avallon continues: “Essentially we’ve redesigned the racquet sport so in the perfect world it’s more accessible, and people love it – and there are lots of design elements behind it. “It’s the first female-founded racquet sport and there’s an attitude behind what we’re creating – and it’s freedom, because we don’t want to be told that we have to go to a certain place at a certain time to take part in racquet sport."
“We want to do it spontaneously and wherever we want, and that’s the culture we’re building.”
On where this idea to create a new sport originated, Avallon says: “We moved to Cambridge when we were younger, and my dad would take us around the colleges.
“A lot of students were saying not taking part in sport might have been having an effect on their grades. We were very young at the time and we thought it would be fun to take that on as a project.”
Avallon, who says Duel is “quite simple but really exhilarating”, explained the rules: “There are three rules: you stay two metres apart, you hit the shuttlecock upwards, and your aim is the other person’s torso.”
She adds that “when we started developing Duel, it was purely our imagination – we never compared it to another racquet sport…”
Avallon and Hills Road Sixth Form student Honour spent years testing ideas and coming up with different versions of Duel.
“Over time, we kept stripping things away,” says Avallon, “we deleted the court, removed the need to change clothes, compressed the time down to 15 minutes and 9 seconds, and made the rules incredibly simple.
“Duel became something that could happen almost anywhere.”
The racquets, which are designed like an accessory, meaning that players can always have theirs with them, evolved alongside it.
“We learned about the impact racquet sports can have on our health, but wanted the racquet to feel less like traditional sports equipment and more like a wellness accessory – lightweight, compact and something you could have with you, ready to draw whenever you wanted to take part in a Duel,” explains Avallon.
The sisters then began working with an industrial designer from Central Saint Martins college in London to develop the racquet they have today, before partnering with Kawasaki to bring it into production. “We’re not from a design background at all,” says Avallon. “We went to Central Saint Martins – that was my aspiration to go there – and met an industrial designer called Gabe [Gabriel Newton]. “He said, ‘Yes, I’ll make the racquet for you – it’ll cost about £10,000’. “As you can imagine, as a 14-year-old, hearing £10,000 [you think] that’s more than I’ll ever make in my life!”
Avallon offered Gabe the chance to become part of what she and Honour were building.
“He believed in what we were saying and he said, ‘You know what? I’ll make it for you’,” recalls Avallon. “It did come with a little bit of a price, but we could handle that.”
Avallon and Honour showcased the Duel 1509 racquet this month as part of the 2026 London Design Festival, with an exhibition Duel outside Jolene bakery on Redchurch Street, Shoreditch.
“We were there on Sunday (20 September) and Tuesday last week,” says Avallon, who was born in Shanghai, moving to Cambridge for her teenage years.
“It was interesting. We got told a few days ago that we’d actually won the London Design Festival, which was quite shocking, as you can imagine.
“It was really the design of the racquet that we wanted to showcase; we didn’t want to create just sports equipment – it’s a beautiful object that you want to have on you.
“It was great to show people how to take part in a Duel, as we showcased outside Jolene’s bakery. We had people coming along and taking part – it was really exciting.”
Avallon concludes: “We want to target the 1.8 billion people who are physically inactive. Despite how great racquet sports are, and sports are in general, the inactivity crisis is just going to keep going up each year.
“We want to tackle it, and solve it, with the Duel racquet.”
Just as they did in Shoreditch, Avallon and Honour will be hosting an ‘Exhibition Duel’ in Cambridge on Thursday, 15 October.
The location will be announced on 1 October on Duel’s website at duelsociety.org.