LAUSANNE - Filipos Kasidokostas can only been saved by a little miracle to survive at the World championships in Seoul. His high position in the world rankings (5th) wavers after losing in his first appearance against Turk Tolgahan Kiraz, who was defeated on the opening day in 8 innings by the American Piedrabuena.
The loss for the Greek (40-37 in 26) is even more painful because he will lose in Seoul 81 rankingpoints from the last World championship in Antwerp, where he finished second behind Caudron. That means if Kasidokostas tomorrow (Saturday) doesn't win against Piedrabuena in a miracle match, with a big margin, he will drop around the twelfth spot on the ranking. He could lose his privileged position for the World Cup circuit.
The second day of the World Cup opened with a crushing first appearance of Frédéric Caudron, the reigning world champion. The Belgian defeated his first opponent, Jérôme Barbeillon, 40-27 in 14 innings (2.857, run of 13).
Torbjörn Blomdahl, the number two in the rankings, needed eleven innings more to deal with Kostas Papakonstantinou (40-28 in 25), Dick Jaspers started excellently against Arnim Kahofer: 40-27 in 18.
Caudron will meet Tatsuo Arai tomorrow, Blomdahl meets Xuan Cuong Ma and Jaspers plays against Luis Aveiga.
Eddy Merckx was the best man in the second session: he kicked down Guido Sacco 40-27 in 17. Sung-Won Choi had a modest start and defeated Antoine Gholam 40-12 in 31. Marco Zanetti, who finished with six, dealed with the previous World Cup revelation Quoc Nguyen Nguyen 40-32 in 26. Kyung-Roul Kim only starred with a run of ten and so signed for his first victory vs Martin Bohac: 40-25 30.
Sung-Won Choi plays for the group win against Ramon Rodriguez, Eddy Merckx against Javier Teran, Kyung-Roul Kim against Huberney Catano and Marco Zanetti against Tonny Carlsen.
The matches in the third session (live on Kozoom):
Jae Ho Cho-Christodoulidis
Funaki-Sánchez
Hofman-Kang
Chi-Yeon Cho-Tasdemir.