04/26/2015
On Day 3 of the European Billiards-Championships the first medal-decisions took place. In front of numerous spectators the final of the Men’s Three-Cushion event was played between Swedish superstar Torbjörn Blomdahl and the no less famous Eddy Merckx from Belgium. Both managed to win their semi-finals against Adnan Yüksel (Turkey) and Dick Jaspers from the Netherlands decisively and an exciting match was expected. Blomdahl, in the first innings, played perfectly and was ahead 19:1-points. At 24:20 the match became close but just a few moments later Blomdahl was the first to reach the goal of 40 points. Belgiums Eddy Merckx had the opportunity to equal the game but the gap of 18 points was finally too high. The new European 3-Cushion Champion in the Juniors-Division is Berkay Karakurt from Turkey. After a tough start Karakurt used his opportunities much better and finally won by 30:20-points after 35 innings against Matthieu Franck from France. Gwendal Marechal (also France) and Joao Ferreira from Portugal had to be satisfied with the bronze medal after losing their semi-finals.
The first gold medal for the host country Germany was given to the junior players of the DBC Bochum. Simon Blondeel and Tobias Bouerdick won their matches in the final of the club-team event for players under 19 years of age against their opponents from the Billard Club Osselien (France). Third player in the German team was Simon’s brother Lukas.
In the „Libre“ U17 it was also celebration-time for Simon Blondeel. The young gun from Germany played a perfect final against Pierre Martory from France and finished the game in the first inning. Martory made 40 points until he missed a ball. Blondeel took over the situation and made the necessary 200 points in more or less thirty minutes. Bryan Eelen (Belgium) and Michael Ramge from Germany reached the semi-finals and received the bronze medal at the awards ceremony on Sunday evening.
In Men’s One-Cushion-Tournament the group stages are still underway. 24 players are divided into eight groups. Frédéric Caudron (Belgium), the winner of 2013, managed to win his first match on early Sunday morning against Miroslav Baca (Czech Republic), he struggled a bit at the beginning before he finally won clearly by 100:42 points after 7 innings. In the match between Eddy Leppens (Belgium) and Jean-Paul de Bruijn (Netherlands) the 45 years old Belgian was the first player to reach the goal of 100 points. De Bruijn had his chance to equalize the game but failed after 99 points!
Meanwhile the first qualification matches were played in the Birilli-competition on the big Match-Tables. 16 players are seeded for the main event as another 48 players try to reach this single elimination round. They are divided into sixteen groups.Surprisingly David Martinelli is already out of the tournament. The former world champion from Italy lost against Angelo Cusso (Switzerland) and finished his group in second place which was not good enough to reach the main stage of the tournament.
All results, pictures and further media-information can be found here. Pay-per-View-Livestream is broadcasted by www.kozoom.com.
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