LIER - The qualification of Eddy Leppens and Peter Ceulemans, on the last night of the preliminaries for the Superprestige, the field of eight players for the quarterfinals is completed. Tonight (Friday), the matches for the first knockout stage will be played in the arena of the Mister 100 in Lier. In the four groups in the preliminary rounds, Eddy Merckx and Eddy Leppens were the best winners on average. The eight seeded players are Eddy Merckx, Eddy Leppens, Steven van Acker, Peter De Backer, Peter Ceulemans, Jef Philipoom, Kurt Ceulemans and Kenny Miatton. Those eight are linked together to compete in the quarterfinals tonight at 19.00 and 21.00.
Eddy Leppens remained unbeaten on the last day of the qualifications with victories over Ronny Daniels (40-21 in 27), Peter Ceulemans (40-33 in 29 and Marco Janssen (40-8 in 11). The group winner shone with three consecutive runs of ten . With his performance, the former Belgian champion finished 1.791, which was the second best in the general ranking after Eddy Merckx (1.903). Leppens was the only one of the sixteen participants with six match points.
Peter Ceulemans started the final session with a draw against Marco Janssen (40-40 in 32) and forced the qualification in his match against Ronny Daniels in the last round (40-29 in 32). Daniels was third thanks to a win against Janssen 40-38 in 39 innings.
The final result of the eight seeded players:
1 Eddy Leppens 6-1.791-10
2 Eddy Merckx 4-1.903-11
3 Steven van Acker 4-1.468-9
4 Peter De Backer 4-1.326-10
5 Jef Philipoom 4-1.236-11
6 Kurt Ceulemans 4-1.232-6
7 Kenny Miatton 4-1.229-8
8 Peter Ceulemans 3-1.215-6.
The quarterfinals for Friday:
19:00:
Steven van Acker-Kurt Ceulemans
Eddy Merckx-Peter Ceulemans
21:00:
Eddy Leppens-Kenny Miatton
Jef Philipoom-Peter De Backer.