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The Winners, a “What should have been” and Kiwi Connections.

The last report on the World Championships finished with New Zealand’s quarter-final loss to Spain. There is a degree, maybe not of satisfaction, but of say admiration when one can say one lost to the eventual winners.

Open Teams

That then was not the case with our Open or indeed our Women’s teams. In their Open semi-final, Spain met the professional Monaco team and gave a pretty good account of themselves winning four of the first five stanzas albeit by smallish margins but still led by 10 imps with 16 boards left. However, Monaco won when it mattered, scraping home 182-176. In the final, they met Netherlands who had beaten the hosts Poland by some 80 imps in their semi-final.

The final was close, only 6 imps in it to Netherlands at the half way stage and they hung on to win 155-134. Poland beat Spain to take the bronze medal.

Our Open Team: GeO Tislevoll, Matthew Brown, Michael Whibley, Michael Ware, Ashley Bach, Michael Cornell and Derek Evennett (npc and overall Chef de Mission)

Women's Teams

Our Women lost to Sweden in the Phase of 16. Sweden drew USA who had knocked Australia out one round earlier in the quarter-finals, but finished second best. The win New Zealand had over USA in the round robin stage became even better when the Americans went on to beat China in the semi-final and France in the final. China took bronze.

Our Women's team: Christine Gibbons, Steph Jacob, Kris Wooles (npc), Shirley Newton, Jenny Wilkinson,

Jenna Gibbons and Susan Humphries

The Seniors

New Zealand’s interest in the latter stages of the Seniors’ event extended only to two members of the Australian team, ex Kiwis Stephen Burgess and Bill Haughie. Australia beat Poland by 8 imps in the Phase of 16. This hardly seemed possible when they were 58 down with just 32 boards to play. Their reward was to meet the real strong USA team (Meckstroth, Hamman and all) in the quarter finals. There were only 5 in it with 16 boards to play but at the end USA was 30 imps up. USA went on to beat Denmark in the semi-final and France in the final.

The Mixed

In the Phase of 16 of the Mixed competition, where New Zealand had missed qualification by an imp, Australia met and were well beaten by a German team which contained Marie Eggeling who had lived and played quite a lot of bridge in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Marie had her own one imp heartache in the quarter-finals as that was the margin they lost by to Bulgaria. In the final, Netherlands beat Russia to make it two gold medals out of four.

Who are the real winners?

Ashley Bach and Michael Cornell have become the innocent bystanders and victims in the latest controversy which has arisen at the World Championships. An opposition pair has posted a letter to the Open Pairs winners, Sabine Auken and Roy Welland, on the “Bridgewinners.com “ website saying that Auken – Welland benefited from a score being entered the wrong way round…and leaving it to the beneficiaries to “do you what you feel should be done”. The letter seems a highly controversial way of bringing this to their opponents’ attention and highlights the constant “law v ethics” debate in such situations. The law says no change to the results can be made (out of time). Were the change to be made, then Bach- Cornell would take the gold medal.

The software used seems inadequate to pick up such an obvious error. Interestingly, we can point to the sportsmanship award our own James and Sam Coutts won last week after a similar incident in Canberra last year. James said “The only thing that we would like to come out of any publicity from this award is the reiteration of the idea that rewarding the real winners of events, based on bridge merits, is what we should all strive for.” A real pity for Michael and Ashley. We wait to see what the pair who finished ahead of them will do.

Richard Solomon

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