Carom Series
ATHENS/CHARTRES/VIC - At three different places, the qualifications for the European Cup for teams in the classical disciplines will be played next weekend (3-4 March). The 11 participating teams play for the qualification for the final, which will be played with six teams in Bochum from 20 to 22 April. The reigning champion DBC Bochum has been seeded automatically. Five teams will qualify from the preliminaries: three group winners and two best numbers two of the three rankings.
The places where is played this weekend are Athens (Greece), Chartres (France) and Vic (Spain). Among the eleven participants are six French teams, three Spanish, one Swiss and one Greek team. The two best runners up are ranked by the percentage of caroms made, because the number of teams differs per group.
The team from the German Bochum with Ludger Havlik (49), Thomas Nockemann (46) and 21-year-old Dutch top talent Sam van Etten won the European Cup last year for the first time in a final against French Ronchin (4-2). The strong team of Vitkov Prague, with Eddy Leppens, Marek Faus and Dick Jaspers, which won the cup two years in a row in 2015 and 2016, was dethroned in the semi-finals by Bochum. Vitkov Prague has stopped its team after three years.
The groups, the teams and the players for the preliminaries:
Athens:
Barrage Club (Gérassimopoulos - Chatzipavlis - Antonopoulos -Thalassinos - Trémoulis)
Douarnenez (G.Le Deventec - Soumagne - F.Le Deventec)
Ecully (Vendittelli - Le Roy - Zoppi - Guénet - Beziers)
Eldense (Albert - Gil - Lacarcel - Gomez - Albert Vidal)
Chartres:
Chartres (Gérimont - Justice - Grétillat - Girard)
Team Austria (Kahofer - Bichler - Cerovsek - Ralis)
Oissel (Petit - Deziles-Legros - Martory - Devogelaere)
Soissons (Careaux - Remond - Dupont)
Vic:
Vic (Mata - Espinasa - Cuenca - Montes - Caudron)
Ronchin (Djoubri - Villiers - Florent - Dessaint)
Zürich (Rech - Boote - G.Antonopoulos - Vogt - Tschander).