Catherine Seale wins European bronze medal

Catherine Seale has won a bronze medal in the Women's Teams at the European Open Championships. She was playing with Marusa Basa (Slovenia), Gail Cameron & Vanessa Vos (both Zimbabwe), and this follows her success in the Mixed Pairs when she and Tom Paske were the highest finishing English pair (25th).

The 7th European Open Championships is taking place in Tromso, Norway and concludes Saturday 11th July.

The first event was the Mixed Teams, in which three teams including English players reached the knockout stages. The teams of:
Sandra Penfold, Brian Senior, Nevena Senior & Roumen Trendafilov (Bulgaria);
Simon Cope, Marion Robertson, Desislava Malakova (Bulgaria) & Stefan Skorchev (Bulgaria);
Sally Brock, Barry Myers, Janet De Botton, Artur Malinowski, Apolinary Kowalski (Poland) & Ewa Miszewska (Poland);
were knocked out at the 'last 16' phase.

In the mixed pairs the leading English pair were Tom Paske & Catherine Seale who finished 25th. Janet De Botton & Artur Malinowski were 27th, Sally Brock & Barry Myers were 31st, David Gold & Susanna Gross were 32nd. Tim Rees, Chairman of the Laws & Ethics Committee, representing Wales and playing with Sam Punch of Scotland, were the leading British pair, finishing in 21st. Brian Senior & Sandra Penfold and Graham Osborne & Frances Hinden were knocked out at the 'A' semi-final stage of the competition.

In the Open teams, the following teams with English involvement reached the knockout stages:
Richard Bowley, Simon Cope, David Gold, Tom Paske, Shivam Shah & Kevin Castner (USA)
Janet De Botton, Artur Malinowski, Nick Sandqvist, Tom Townsend, Thor Erik Hoftaniska (Norway) & Thomas Charlsen (Norway)
David Bakhshi, Russ Ekeblad (USA), Mike Levine (USA), Dennis McGarry (USA), Ricco Van Prooijen (Netherlands), Louk Verhees (Netherlands)

David's team was knocked out in the quarter-finals, the others at the 'last 16' stage.

In the Senior's Pairs, David Kendrick & Patrick Jourdain (Wales) finished second in the 'A' semi-final, and went on to finish 7th in the final. In the Women's Pairs, Lizzie Godfrey & Pauline Cohen, and Sally Brock & Debbie Sandford qualified for the 'A' semi-final, but did not progress to the final.

In the Open Pairs the leading English players in the qualifying round were: Tom Townsend & Nick Sandqvist - 21st; Willie Whittaker & Peter Bertheau (Sweden) - 33rd; Sarah O'Connor & Mike Bell - 49th. Willie & Peter, and Phil King & Andrew McIntosh, qualified for the final, finishing 51st and 22nd respectively.

The event is being shown on Bridge Base Online with play starting at 10am and concluding around 7:30pm on most days.

July 10, 2015