Germany takes firm grip on the Gold Medals
11 Aug 2010 at 13:30 | Published by: Hans | Views: 13883 | News search
Anne Bollrich, Germany, has taken over the individual top position after day 2 (Photo by Pasi Aho 2010)
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On the second day of the Youth World Championships in Sochi, Russia, Germany took what seems to be a firm grip on the Team Gold Medals.
The German Boys won all three rounds with a broad margin today and especially played really sharp on the eternit course. They now lead with 37 strokes before Italy and the Gold is of course already secured. The two top players from yesterday Andreas Schneider and Robin Hettrich has today also being joined by the German Junior Champion, Gerrit Below, that was best today with 66 strokes over the 3 rounds. These three Germans are all in joint lead position individually with 146 strokes. Also Philip Lau played well today and with 69 strokes he was third best individually for the day.
On second position the Italian Boys continued to play very well. The 3 Lorenzo's (Bellucci, Ciompi and Levis) are all within the 6 best individual players and Ciompi and Levis ties the lead with the 3 Germans mentioned above. Ciompi was second best of the day with 68 strokes.
In third position the Swedes also made a good day and are now only 3 strokes behind Italy for the silver position. The Swedish starter, Mattias Brännström, made a perfect 18 on the last round of the day setting a new course record on the difficult Sochi eternit. He was also the best Swede today with 69 strokes, tied third individually with Philip Lau today.
Behind the top three we find Austria in fourth place another 11 behind Sweden. The Russian Boys played a better game today and overtook the 5th position from Finland by 3 strokes. Down in 7th position we find Switzerland that must be seen as the most disappointing Team result in the Boys category so far. But they are only 7 strokes behind Russia so a lot can still happen the last day.
Also the German Girls won two of three rounds today, even though the first round this morning was actually won by the Russian girls. With all green and one blue lap results today (Anne Bollrich, 24 on the first Beton round) the German Girls are no 13 strokes ahead of Austria. The Gold is maybe not secured but in a really firm grip by the German girls. The German Girls Team is also the only team with 4 evenly good players. All other Teams suffer from having at least one player not matching the others.
One of the Team suffering from having only two star players is Austria in second position. Lara Jehle and Jacqueline Helm are individually in position 2 and 3 but the third girl in the team Carina Utzig is 21 strokes behind Helm down in 19th position. The substitute Martina Danner is 12 strokes better than Carina Utzig and if her result had been counted the gap up to Germany would only have been 1 stroke.
The Russian Girls Team has one bright star in Siranush Balasanyan. She is for sure the "Breakthrough of the Year" right now with a tied Bronze position after two days play. Together with her fighting Team mates the Russian girls have the Bronze position in their hand at the moment. But Switzerland is only 4 strokes behind opening for a thrilling fight for the first ever Russian Team Medal tomorrow.
Another Team that is probably suffering the most from having one player not playing as well as expected are the Swedish Girls. Sara Karlsson and Lina Liljegren is delivering as expected, but the third girl Angelica Nilsson has a nightmare competition. She is 50 strokes behind her Team mate Lina after 6 rounds and 65 stokes behind the leader Bollrich. The main issue with this is that Sweden has not any substitute player to change to since Frida Elmdahl couldn’t start.
Individuall is Anne Bollrich, Germany in the lead with 150. Then follows the two Austrian girls Lara Jehle (153) and Jacqueline Helm (156) and Siranush Balasanyan, Russia on (156).
More excitement will follow tomorrow when the Teams final will be executed and also the qualifications to the KO-mode on Friday.
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