Koreans with heavy guns in the arena

PELOPENNESOS - The entry of the gladiators, for the official opening of the World Cup in Pelopennesos, Greece, gave us a flawless picture of the current strength in three cushion per country. 32 players entered the arena for the main tournament, eight from them are from Korea, four from Greece (including two wildcards), four from Belgium and Turkey, three from Spain and the Netherlands, two from Vietnam and one from Sweden, Italy, France and Venezuela.

The Koreans came up with big guns, the Belgians have a huge delegation, but the competition is very strong, including Torbjörn Blomdahl, Marco Zanetti, Jérémy Bury, Dani Sánchez, Filippos Dick Jaspers and others.
The mixed group of players starts at 12.00 today with the first four games in the main tournament.

For the opening ceremony the protagonists were directed to the arena, the organizer and Elena, from the main sponsor, spoke a welcome word. UMB president Jean Claude Dupont did the official opening.

The Pelopennessos World Cup is the third of this year’s cycle, after Antalya (Turkey), where Torbjörn Blomdahl won ahead of Jérémy Bury and Gury (Korea) with Dong Koong Kang as winner and Dani Sánchez as second.

Torbjörn Blomdahl maintained, despite an early elimination, his status as number one in the world, but Frédéric Caudron came closer: the Swede now leads with 402 points ahead of Caudron (371), Bury (352), Zanetti (319) and Choi (303).

,,I feel some extra pressure here'', Blomdahl said this morning before the start. ,,We get rid of the points we won in the Suwon World Cup 2011, where I beat Jae Ho Cho in the final. That means to me that I have to defend 80 points.’’

Frédéric Caudron loses only 8 points in Pelopennesos, Jérémy Bury 38, Marco Zanetti 8 and Sung-Won Choi also 8.

The matches, on four tables broadcasted live by Kozoom, for the first round are:

12:00:

Torbjörn Blomdahl-Roland Forthomme

Eddy Leppens-Jung Han Heo

Javier Palazón-Kostas Papakonstantinou

Dani Sánchez-Quiet Chien Tran.