TRABZON - The Spanish champion, the junior world champion, the Dutch champion pentathlon and the European champion ladies didn't survived the last battlefield. The deadly clash in the final qualifying today only brought the very best players at the front: the twelve group winners, with Jean van Erp and Nikos Polychronopoulos as the numbers one and two with over two average, were among the 32 players who tonight were in the draw for the main tournament.
Jean van Erp has played a very remarkable qualifying round: the Dutchman started in his group with a win against Jean Reverchon and 2.500 average and then defeated the young Egyptian Sameh Sidhom with 2.000. With that score he finished on top of the group in the last qualification day, before Nikos Polychronopoulos, who also presented an impressive score after his matches with Therese Klompenhouwer and Jean Paul de Bruijn.
In the early evening ther was a lot of tension in the group with Ruben Legaspi and Peter Ceulemans. The Spaniard won the final battle 2-1 (15-11 in the third set, average 2277) and pushed the Belgian with an average of 1,777 out of the tournament.
Haeng Jik Kim, the junior world champion, was considered as one of the candidates to come up to the main tournament, but he broke down against Gerhard Kostistansky, who with all his routine knocked out the young Korean.
The result of the draw this evening showed some wonderful matches in the first round. Dick Jaspers, seeded as the number one, starts the tournament against Jérôme Barbeillon, the conqueror of Roland Forthomme. Frédéric Caudron starts against Ruben Legazpi, Kyung-Roul Kim meets Eddy Leppens and Eddy Merckx faces Julian Morales.
Jaspers plays in the top of the schedule, together with Merckx, Horn, Blomdahl and Heo. Caudron plays in the bottom schedule, where he possibly can meet Zanetti, Kasidokostas, Sánchez and Kim.
Lütfi Cenet, the Turkish champion, tomorrow will start against Jae Ho Cho of Korea. He has promised to make ,,a special stunt'', but didn't want to say what he has planned to do.
Also very interesting to follow are the matches between Marco Zanetti and Nikos Polychronopoulos, Torbjörn Blomdahl and Jung Han Heo, Savas Bulut and Jef Philipoom, Javier Palazón and Jean van Erp, Dani Sánchez and Adnan Yüksel and Filipos Kasidokostas and Barry van Beers.
Of all the Turkish players in the preliminaries, only Savas Bulut has reached the main tournament. The Turks nevertheles are with five players (Cenet, Tasdemir, Yüksel, Coklu and Bulut) in the main event.
The other players come from Belgium (four), Korea (four), three Dutch players and three Spaniards, two French, two Austrians, two Japanese and two Greeks and one Swede, one Peruvian, one German, one Italian and one Colombian.