ANTWERP - It must have been some months ago that Marco Zanetti, in this year of his great successes, must have felt in a vale of tears as he did in his match against Javier Teran. The Italian escaped to elimination this afternoon (Saturday) in the first session of the main event and won from the penalty-spots. Frédéric Caudron won the top match against Dani Sánchez 40-31 in 19.
As Torbjörn Blomdahl and Jérémy Bury in the preliminaries and Sung-Won Choi and Dani Sánchez in the first of two eighth-final rounds, Zanetti was close to an early beating. His opponent, Javier Teran, 33 years of age, Pan-American champion in 2011, closed a big gap of thirteen points, equalized at 29-29 and even could ran out to his first match point.
He missed unlucky, as Marco Zanetti admitted, considering the European champion was trailing 39-38 at that time. Zanetti finished with two and Teran could equalize from the spots, so penalty shots had to decide.
The Italian started with six and put his opponent under big pressure. Javier Teran was disturbed by a flash in the audience, playing from the spots, went up for a while, then focused on the shot and missed.
Marco Zanetti crawled through the eye of the needle and confessed: ,,I had a bad feeling, but it was no surprise to me. Before this World championehip I had already told friends that I did not feel so good.''
The victory, however, brings him to the top eight, where he’s facing Alexander Salazar tonight. The Colombian stunted again, after he had outplayed Korean Kang in the preliminary rounds.
Also Sung-Won Choi, the best Korean in the world ranking, stumbled over Salazar, who had the best final sprint in the closing innings: after 29-28 he ran out to 40-38.
Frédéric Caudron against Dani Sanchez, the top billings in this afternoon matches, was decided by two high runs of the Belgian. Just before the break Caudron attacked with ten, after a minor phase in the middle of the match, he finished with nine.
Martin Horn is his next opponent. The German defeated Adnan Yüksel in a great style and like Caudron in only nineteen innings: 40-19.
The matches for the next session:
Polychronopoulos - Kim
Kasidokostas - Heo
Jaspers Merckx
Tasdemir - Catano