Tom Hanlon with Leslie Amoils (Canada), Brad Moss, Joe Grue, (USA), Ami Zamir and Oren Toledano (Israel) finished third in the Swiss teams tournament at the North American championships, which ended in Chicago on Sunday. Anton Birman (Israel) led the winning team of mainly Chinese players. An all-USA side was second.
The result somewhat redressed Hanlon’s earlier disappointment of exiting the Spingold knock-out tournament in the round of 32 to a side led by Steve Levinson (USA) that included Barnet Shenkin (Scotland) and was completed by Norwegian players. Hanlon led for three of the four segments before being overtaken towards the end to lose by two points. The winners were Martin Fleisher, Chip Martel (USA), Cédric Lorenzini, Thomas Bessis (France), Antonio Sementa, Alfredo Versace (Italy).
Juniors Luca Crone and Matthew O’Farrell qualified 31st of 52 pairs for the final of the Red Ribbon pairs competition and eventually finished 17th – the only non-American players in the top 20. It was won by a father and son partnership, Brandon and Xin Ge, from California. Crone and O’Farrell went from Chicago to Veldhoven, Netherlands to compete at the European transnational youth championships, which begin on Tuesday. Crone will partner Isabel Burke in the opening mixed pairs championship in which Phedra Kingston and David Hoyne will also represent Ireland. Crone and O’Farrell and Burke and Tom Gorey will play in the under-26 pairs tournament, which will begin on Thursday and end on Saturday.
Hanlon, Hugh McGann, John Carroll, Mark Moran, Adam Mesbur and Tommy Garvey, with non-playing captain Gráinne Barton and coach Nick FitzGibbon, will represent Ireland in the World team championship (Bermuda Bowl) in Marrakesh, Morocco from the August 20th to the of September 2nd. FitzGibbon was a playing member of the team when it qualified for Marrakesh through the European Championships in Madeira last year but he has retired from international competition and is replaced by Garvey. This is only the second time that an Irish team has contested the Bermuda Bowl; the first was 2007 in Shanghai when five of the current team and FitzGibbon played. Moran makes his Bermuda Bowl debut. When Ireland won European bronze in 1979, only two sides went forward. Nowadays the leading eight are selected.
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The Ciara Burns memorial, two-session competition for intermediate and novice pairs will be held at Kelvin Malone bridge centre, Belfast next Sunday starting at 11am. Entry form on nibu.co.uk. Closing date is Thursday.