"Terminator" Niels Feijen with hi tech equipment Foto: B. Kaserer
The preparations for the tournament are in the final stage to be finalized. Up to eight tables will be in the LiveStream, including one feature table. The first players have already entered the arena and warm up. Tonight at 19:00 CET, IBPF President David Morris will call for the player's meeting and players will then be informed about all details of this event. After that, another training session can be held. The first matches start at 09:00 CET on Thursday morning, May 31st.
Besides that, a very interesting examination takes place in the nearby poolhall “Ballazzo”. The Austrian Federation together with the Sports Institute of the University of Vienna has launched a project in order to find out the perfect motion and movement for pool players. In order to find that out, the best athletes of the Euro-Tour will be tested in an environment that is especially installed for them. The players look a little bit funny with all these cables and dots on them but the outcome of that research will definitely be more than interesting. “We have many questions to the scientists once these player's data is all in the computer”, says Bernhard Kaserer from the Austrian federation, “we want to find out why player A can put 7G of speed in the cue ball on the break shot while player B can only put 3G in it”. “The reasons for that are biomotorical” explains Kaserer, “and we are using high tech equipment here in order to find these things out and provide our coaches with the results.” The players are all executing the same shots and the motions are compared to each other. In order to get the data, equipment worth around 430,000,- € is used. Eight high tech cameras, each worth 32.000,- € and a high speed camera which takes 5000 pictures a second make it possible to capture the complete motion of the player in 3D. The many sensors that are attached to the player tell the scientists everything about angles, acceleration of muscles, weight distribution, etc. When all the data is compared, a diploma project will be written and the results will be shared with the Austrian Pool federation.
The event will be hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organized by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). For further information and reference please go to the federation website www.epconline.eu, follow us on twitter @EPBF_News or contact our press office.
