Kim Laaksonen
Finland’s Kim Laaksonen and Germany’s Tina Vogelmann are the straight pool champions at the Dynamic Billiards European Championships, as they both came through close run matches to claim gold in Tampere. Despite the varying races, both matches finished almost simultaneously as cheers rang through the arena and Laaksonen needed to compose himself for match ball.
After the match, a clearly ecstatic Laaksonen said, “I mean it’s incredible. I’ve never had this feeling before. I’d won a couple of bronze medals and one silver so yeah, it feels amazing. I was thinking, I can’t do anything here as Yannick ran 91 balls in about 15 minutes but then he gave me one chance and I ran a 79. I’m so shocked!
“I’ve never been so nervous in my life for those last few balls. My hands were shaking, my legs were shaking but it was fun though. What else can you hope, winning in your home country – it’s perfect!”
The Finn, was up against it in 18 year-old Yannick Pongers, who is one of the hottest young prospects in European pool and won two golds and a silver at last year’s European Junior Championships. In fact, the Dutchman opened up a 91 point lead in the race to 125 match to leave his opponent with everything to do when he finally got to the table.
The 31 year-old Finn though, scratched when on 6 points to hand the table back and seemingly leave himself in a deep hole. Pongers, however only lasted three balls before getting into a spot which forced a miss.
Laaksonen really needed a significant visit this time to get back into the match and he got his head down and moved his score onto 85 before a miss gave Pongers the opportunity to close the match out. He completed the rack to take him to 108 but left a nasty cut on the 6 ball into a blind pocket to start the next rack. He missed it to allow Laaksonen back to the table trailing 85-108.
It was an opportunity for the Finn but the bulk of the balls were clustered around the spot but he methodically picked them off to end the rack just nine points behind Pongers. He completed the next rack to give himself a 5 point lead and leave the finishing line 12 points away. He made no mistakes and was clearly thrilled to have won his first European Championship gold medal in his home country.
In a field of 85 players, Laaksonen ran undefeated through the event, beating Italy’s Daniele Corrieri in the winners’ qualification round. He followed that with wins over Konrad Juszczyszyn, Jan Van Lierop and Francisco Diaz-Pizarro before eliminating Joao Grilo at the semi-final stage.
Medals – Men
Gold – Kim Laaksonen (FIN)
Silver – Yannick Pongers (NED)
Bronze – Joao Grilo (POR)
Daniel Maciol (POL)
Tina Vogelmann
In the ladies’ division, it was a successive gold for Germany as Tina Vogelmann followed up on Ina Kaplan’s win last year as she beat Turkey’s Eyllul Kibaroglu 75-67 in a close-fought match in which either player could have won. Vogelmann had trailed 35-67 but a run of 24 got her right back in it and when Kibaroglu faltered with the finishing line in sight, she stepped up to claim her first-ever European Championship gold.
Kibaroglu was perhaps the in-form player, having carried off the Women’s Euro Tour event which concluded last Monday but Vogelmann battled hard and kept herself together in the critical final rack.
Commented Vogelmann, “I’m totally overwhelmed. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t play as well as I think I can do to be honest, but overall, I’m very happy that I could fight back in the final as I was a little bit behind against Eyllul, who is always strong.”
Previously, Vogelmann had collected three bronze, medals, all in straight pool, but this time she went to the top.
“I didn’t look at the score; I only looked at the table and at the job in front of me and I tried go ball for ball and see what happens. I could see that Eyllul was struggling a little bit as she made some mistakes – of course, I also did – but I didn’t watch the score.”
Medals – Ladies
Gold – Tina Vogelmann (GER)
Silver – Eyllul Kibaroglu (TUR)
Bronze – Melanie Sussenguth (GER)
Diana Stateczny (GER)
Play continues to tomorrow with the 10-ball division which concludes on the evening of Monday 5th June.
All the matches can be viewed live by visiting www.epbf.com/tournaments/eurot
This will take you through to viewing options. In addition, selected matches will be streamed on Facebook Live on the EPBF page.
Results, live scoring and draw are available at www.epbf.com
0 comments