Sweden Team World Champions
Date: 2004-11-16
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Sweden defended their title in the team competition in the
World Open in Vienna last weekend. A record number of 10
countries took part in the competition, following the entrance of
new countries Poland and Greece.
Sweden was huge favourites and lived up to these expectations.
The Scandinavians still have an impressing number of high quality
players. Such strong characters as Stefan Adamsson (Swedish
Champion 2003) and Mats Källberg (World Open Runner-up 2002)
were missing in Vienna, and in the final against Germany Sweden
could afford to put World # 5 Rickard Persson aside.
But those who expected the final to be a walk in the park for the
Swedes were wrong. The games in team events are played to 11 and
strange things can happen - and they did! Altmeister Volker Sach
caused an upset when he beated World # 2 Roland Helle and Silke
Altmann were close to beat ex-World Champion Lilian Druve. In the
end, however, the winning score was 25 points for Sweden after
comfortable victories for Magnus Eliasson against Holger Stamm
and Pär Carleke (World Vet # 1) against Kristian Aschenbach.
The Germans had reasons to celebrate too after their biggest
success so far in this sport. Since most of the current German
elite origin from the Frankfurt area we look forward to see more
from the 80-million country.
Germany beat second-seeded Scotland in the quarter-final. A true
shock for the Scots whose main goal of the season was to surpass
the rivals from England. Led by Douglas Struthers and John
O´Donnell England, on their part, eliminated Finland in the
quarter-final before losing to Sweden by 53 points in the
semifinal.
The World Open organizers from Austria defeated Poland and then
lost to the neighbours from Germany. In the match for 3rd pirze
England won by 11 points against Austria and earned a much longed
for bronze-medal.
Full results from the team event can be found at the World
Championship tournament web site.
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