DONGHAE CITY - Torbjörn Blomdahl, who just turned 60, won the World Cup in Veghel in the Netherlands last week. That puts the Swede among the main contenders for the 74th three-cushion world title, which will be fought for next week (9-13 November) in Korea's Donghae City. 57-year-old Dick Jaspers is the defending champion, Torbjörn Blomdahl the record holder titles in this billiard generation, in total eight players are on the player list with one or more world titles in the most popular discipline on their palmares: Torbjörn Blomdahl 7, Dick Jaspers 5, Dani Sánchez 4, Eddy Merckx and Marco Zanetti 2, Semih Sayginer, Ryuuji Umeda and Sung-won Choi 1. Who will be the new world champion next week? A player in his 60's, 50's or in his young 20s?
The oldest player at the 2022 World Cup is Marco Zanetti (60), followed immediately by Torbjörn Blomdahl, who is exactly 199 days younger. The youngest in the field of 48 players is Italian Alessio D'Agata, who is 22, followed by Korean Myung Woo Cho (24), Frenchman Gwendal Maréchal (25), Korean Jun Tae Kim (27) and Portuguese Jose Miguel Soares (28).
The youngest ever world champion was Dani Sánchez, who was 24 when he won his first of four world titles in 1998 in Rezé, France. Torbjörn Blomdahl won his first of seven world titles when he was 25, Raymond Ceulemans was 26 when he took his first of 21 world titles in Germany, leading him to the all-time record.
When counting from 2000, the battle for the most important title in three-cushion was dominated by the players who are still among the world's top players today. Jaspers won 5 times, Blomdahl and Sánchez 3 times, Zanetti, Merckx and Caudron 2 times. Sung Won Choi, Filippos Kasidokostas (when he was 26), Semih Sayginer and Ryuuji Umeda won 1 title each from 2000 onwards and even Raymond Ceulemans, in his latter days, became world champion once more in 2001 in Luxembourg, the last time the legendary Belgian played an individual World Cup.
Dick Jaspers, the defending champion, won his first world title in 2000 in Saint Etienne, when he was 35, but won the world championship four more times in the 22 years that followed, making him the most successful player in this period. A comparison: Marco Zanetti became world champion for the first time at 40, Eddy Merckx and Semih Sayginer when they were 38, Sung Won Choi, the only Korean world champion, when he was 37 and Ryuui Umeda at 39.
History shows that the World Championships are mostly dominated by players in their 30s, 40s and 50s with high exceptions for players in their 20s. From 1960, it were also almost exclusively Europeans who claim the world title with the exception of Suarez from Peru in 1961, Sang Lee, the American Korean in 1963 thanks to wins in 6 World Cups, Japanese Kobayashi in 1974 (Antwerp) and 1984 (Krefeld), Japanese Umeda in 2007 in Cuenca and Korean Choi in 2014 in Seoul.
The 74th world championship goes over five days, from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13 November at Donghae Stadium in Donghae City, South Korea, 150 kilometers east of Seoul on Japan Sea. The 48 selected players are divided into 16 groups of three players. The games over 40 points in this stage will designate the 32 players for the knockout stage over 50 caroms.
Apart from Dick Jaspers, the seeded 16 players are: Dani Sánchez (Sp), Marco Zanetti (It), Quiet Chien Tran (Un), Sameh Sidhom (Eg), Martin Horn (Ger), Tayfun Tasdemir (Tur), Torbjörn Blomdahl (Zw), Semih Sayginer (Tur), Eddy Merckx (Bel), Jérémy Bury (Fr), Haeng-jik Kim (Kor), Murat Naci Coklu (Tur), Jung-han Heo (Kor), Jun-tae Kim (Kor), Duc Anh Chien Nguyen (Un) and Sung-won Choi (Kor).
The 13 CEB places went to Ruben Legazpi (Sp), Jean Paul de Bruijn (Nl), Turgay Orak (Tur), Dion Nelin (De), Michael Nilsson (Zw), José Miguel Soares (Por), Roland Forthomme (Bel), Cengiz Karaca (Ger), Nikos Polychronopoulos (Gr), Gwendal Maréchal (Fr), Radek Novak (Ch), Gerhard Kostistansky (Oo) and Alessio d'Agata (It).
The 8 CPB places: Pedro Gonzales, José Juan Garcia, Daniel Morales from Colombia, Javier Vera and Christian Hernandez from Mexico, Luis Aveiga and Javier Teran from Ecuador and Pedro Piedrabuena from the US.
The 5 ACBC places go to Myung-woo Cho (Kor), Tran Thanh Tu Nguyen (Vn), Ryuuji Umeda (Jap), Choong-bok Lee (Kor) and Thai Hong Chiem (Vn). The 3 AMECC places are for Mohammed Abdin (Eg), Mashhour Abu Tayeh (Jor) and Fadi Abousaleh (Lib). The two wildcards are for Chang-hoon Seo and Bong-joo Hwang (Kor).
Composition of the qualification groups:
A: Jaspers - Maréchal - Nguyen TTT
B: Sanchez - Piedrabuena - Aveiga
C: Zanetti - Abdin - Kostistansky
D: Tran QC - Legazpi - Abousaleh
E: Sidhom - Teran - De Bruijn
F: Horn - Forthomme - Soares
G: Tasdemir - Seo - Hwang
H: Blomdahl - Garcia - Vera
I: Sayginer - Abu Tayeh - Novak
J: Merckx - Nelin - Orak
K: Bury - Nilsson - Karaca
L: Kim HJ - Lee CB - Umeda
M: Coklu - Gonzales - Morales D
N: Heo JH - Cho MW - Hernandez
O: Kim JT - Polychronopoulos - D'Agata
P: Nguyen DAC - Choi SW - Thai HC
Ryuui Umeda, the last Japanese world champion