San Remo - Open/Womens and Seniors Qualifying

After such a great start, things seem to have gone a bit flat for the English contingent in the European.
Well done to the EBL at least for scrapping the 3rd/4th play off - so both our semi final teams - Janet De Botton (+ Artur Malinowski. Nick Sandqvist and Nevena Senior) and "Badger" (Frances Hinden, Jeffrey Allerton, Graham Osborne and Paula Leslie) received bronze medals.
In the pairs however medals were hard to come by, although a great performance by Brian Senior and Sandra Penfold left them just off the pace in 6th slightly more than a top behind bronze. Other English pairs making the 52 pair final were Hinden-Osborne and Brunner-Holland
Over the weekend teams were vying to make the knock out stages of the Open, senior and Women's series.

Our only qualifier for the last 32 in the open was Irens, (Erichsen, Gold, Towsend with Tundal and Groetheim from Norway) who qualified in 2nd place. De Botton and Mizel also made the "A" semi final which was incredibly close throughout, but failed to make the cut. We have one representative in the women's series (Penfold, Smith, Brock & Senior) a team with a host of champions. With two matches to go, they will have to make a great effort to qualify out of very tough group, as they are about half a match off 4th place in their group which will qualify them for the quarter final. Still, they have two of the lowest placed teams left to play so fingers crossed!
We also have one team in the Seniors (Harper, Harper, Hackett and Hoffman) but with two matches to go, they are mathematically out of the running. There remain the pairs events in each series, which end on Friday.
Stop Press - Penfold closes to within 7 VP of joint 3rd with 1 match to go