For the first time ever, we had an international tournament voor players with a disability in Belgium. So I guess we can say the pressure was pretty high. However, everything went very smooth, thanks to a lot of volunteers. So all by all, the tournament was a great succes.
There are 10 types of 'disabillities', which indicates the level of your abilities. The types from 1 - 5 are people in a wheelchair, and types 6 - 10 are the people who are still capable of walking. The lower the number for each group, the worse the disability is.
Three of the eightteen Belgian players managed to reach the final in their respective categories: gold en silver for Mathie Loick and Marc Ledoux in categorie 8, and Ben Despineux, who received the silver medal in categorie 7.
Unfortunately, next year there won't be a Belgian Open. The reason for this is that the organisation wanted to wait, and see how the first edition went. If everything went smooth (wich we now know, it did), they would try it again in 2015, because if you want to organise an international tournament, it has to be registered more than a year before date.
Xu Xin, currently number 2 on the world ranking, defeated Vladimir Samsonov in the final match with 4-1. Earlier, he had already defeated players like Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Patrick Baum. One of the best European players, Timo Boll, was defeated in the semi-finals by Samsonov. In the small final match (the match for 3rd & 4th place), Ovtcharov defeated Boll in 4 short sets.
The only Belgian player in the tournament, Jean-Michel Saive, didn't make it further than the group phase, in wich he lost from Marcos Freitas and Yang Zi. Jean-Mi is without a doubt the best Belgian player (despite his age of 43 years old!), but the competition in the rest of the world, and China in specific) is way too high.
Next month the world ranking will be updated, so I think these results will surely have an influence on that ranking.
For the first time ever, we had an international tournament voor players with a disability in Belgium. So I guess we can say the pressure was pretty high. However, everything went very smooth, thanks to a lot of volunteers. So all by all, the tournament was a great succes.
