Gold in Luxembourg for Puerto Rico’s Afanador
(by Steve Hopkins/Photo by ITTF)
The Luxembourg Open Table Tennis Championships was held a week ago in Kirchberg in the Northeast quarter of Luxembourg City.
The tournament’s top seed was Lioney Weber of Switzerland. There were 42 participants in all, with nearly all representing European countries. Nicholas Tio represented the United States, and was the only other player from North America. Tio fell to Andrei Labanau of Belarus 4-2 and Jonathan Thimon of Swedent 4-0.
The story of the tournament was Puerto Rico’s Brian Afanador who won the Men’s Singles event. Afanador defeated Ciociu (LUX) 4-0 and Chernov (Russia 4-1) on his way to the quarterfinals. He then defeated Shamruk (BLR) 4-0 in the quarters, and Levergne (France) 4-2 in the semifinals.
In the final, Afanador faced Simon Soderlund of Sweden. Afanador won the first two games 11-9, and 11-4. Soderlund then changed the momentum and pulled out an 11-7 victory in the third. However, Afanador closed the door with tight wins in the final two games. Afanador over Soderlund 4-1 (9, 4, -7, 9, 10)
