(by Steve Hopkins)
Munich is host to the European Championships this week, and the top two seeds have both advanced to the Final 8. Top seed Truls Moregard will face countryman Mattias Falck in one Quarterfinal tomorrow. Second seed Darko Jorgic will face Tiago Apolonia. Timo Boll will face Dan Qiu in an all-German Quarterfinal, and Kristian Karlsson will face Dima Ovtcharov in the final pairing. Apolonia is from Portugal and Jorgic is from Slovenia. Of the other six, Boll, Qiu and Ovtcharov are from Germany and Moregardh, Falck, and Karlsson are all Swedish.
The tightest of the Quarterfinal matches were Ovtcharov over Marcos Freitas 4-3, Kristian Karlsson over Alexis Lebrun 4-2, and Apolonia over Patrick Franziska 4-2. Boll logged the most dominant performance, with a 4-0 win over Yang Wang of Slovakia. Each of the other matches was a 4-1 win (Qiu over Benedikt Duda, Falck over Anton Kallberg, Moregardh over Jon Persson, and Jorgic over Tomislav Pucar).
In the Women’s Quarterfinals, three Germans advanced. Sabine Winter topped Giorgia Piccolin of Italy 4-0, Nina Mittelham topped Jianan Yuan of France 4-3, and Xiaona Shan defeated Portugal’s Jieni Shao 4-3. The fourth Quarterfinal saw Austria’s Sofia Polcanova defeate Romania’s Bernadette Szocs 4-2.
More action is scheduled for Saturday.
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