Early Thursday evening, Panagiotis Gionis and his team, Bogoria Grodzisk, entered this year’s Champions League men’s table tennis competition on the right foot.
In the premiere of the second group, the Polish club defeated the Czech Ostrov 3-1 at home, took its first two points and took a step towards the continuation of its European journey. Gionis prevailed in his only game.
A few hours later, Gerasimos Hatzilygeroudis was lucky enough to enjoy the qualification of Prisco L’Escala to the third phase of the Europe Cup and his own very good performance in his first ever appearance in a European Interclub Cup.
Competing at home, the Spanish team finished second in their group at stage 2 after an impressive finale with a three-way tie at 4 points (1 win-2 losses).
This is followed by the European Women’s Cup. In stage 2 specifically, with Panathinaikos AO claiming qualification on Friday and Saturday in a group in Linares, Spain, and Leeds Frosberg of Malamatenia Papadimitriou competing on Saturday in Mirandela, Portugal.
From the second round of seeding, the multi-experienced Bogoria was directly in stage 2 of the Champions League. She clearly had the upper hand against the Czechs and proved it with a 3-1 set win, despite starting the match badly, despite losing later to the Japanese athlete she has on her roster this year.
Gionis competed in the second individual game. He faced, in fact, a former teammate of his in Bogoria, the Czech Pavel Sirucek. He was stable and completely careful to prevail with a 3-0 set and make it 2-0 in the team score at that moment.
The first player for the Polish champion was the young Pole Milos Rezimski, and his victory with an upset at the beginning was very important…
With a game more, Bogoria is ahead of the leader Neu Ulm, only the winner of the group advances to the final four, the second will be “relegated” to the Europe Cup and the third will be excluded from every European competition.
In detail, the evolution of the match Bogoria-Ostrov 3-1:
Milos Regimski-David Reispis 3-2 (9-11, 9-11, 11-5, 11-5, 6-3)
Panagiotis Gionis-Pavel Siroutsek 3-0 (11-6, 11-9, 11-7)
Gene Takuya-Thomas Tregler 1-3 (7-11, 11-7, 7-11, 8-11)
Rezimski-Siruchek 3-0 (11-4, 11-4, 11-7)
In Spain, Prisco L’Escala were straight into stage 2 and began their quest for group two on Wednesday. It also hosted Les Borges from Spain, Croatia’s Libertas Marincolor and Belgium’s Soca Hoboken.
In the first match, he beat Marincolor with 3-2 sets. Hatzilygeroudis was seeded as the first player and in his debut in a European club competition he overcame Miho Simovics with 3-1 sets (11-7, 11-4, 6-11, 11-5).
In the second match, he lost 3-0 sets to the first Croatian opponents, Filip Chipin, 3-0 sets (6-11, 12-14, 7-11).
Also, on Wednesday L’Escala had the “civil war” with Borques. Also an inconclusive match, in which there was a defeat this time with 3-2. The two-time “bronze” Balkan champion of the men’s team played a match and defeated Francesco Carrera with 3-0 sets (11-5, 12-10, 11-7).
In the third and decisive game, L’Escala met the strongest team in the group, Hoboken, and lost 3-0. The Belgians, who eventually took first place undefeated, were unbeatable, but Hatzilygeroudis and his team-mates had more on their minds in the match between Marincolor and Borges.
They knew that only with a 3-2 set win for the Croats, they had high hopes of qualifying, and indeed they were… in favor of it. With Hoboken they played freely for the best, the Patronian champion (again playing in position 1) led 2-0 sets of Gabrielos Kamaras, but he broke with 3-2 in all 6 points of the last set (12-10, 12-10, 8-11, 4-11, 2-6).
His teammates for the two days were the Spaniards Iker Gonzalez and Javier Peral.
Immediately after, the calculations for the privileged second place began, as Marincolor, Borges and L’Escala had 4 points, from a win between them and the same score in individual matches, since all matches ended 3-2 sets.
Thus, they counted the total sets from the three matches and there L’Escala prevailed to pass to the round of 16. Undoubtedly, this qualification, combined with the good individual presence in a new experience, are another reward for the progress made by Hatzilygeroudis in recent years.
In the European Women’s Cup, Panathinaikos competes in the next two days in Linares with Katerina Toliou, Konstantina Paridis and Ana Tofad. There are three teams in the group, the first two will qualify for the next phase.
The schedule of Panathinaikos games in Greek time is as follows:
Friday 20/10 at 15:00: Panathinaikos-Constanta (Romania)
Saturday 21/10 at 11:00 Panathinaikos-Almentra (Spain)
In neighboring Portugal, LZ Linz Frösberg of Papadimitriou will chase one more step after qualifying for stage 2. For the first group, they will meet local Mirandela at 16:00 Greek time and Czech Ostrov at 21:00 on Saturday.
I am currently a news writer for News Bulletin247 where I mostly cover sports news. I have always been interested in writing and it is something I am very passionate about. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and spending time with my family and friends.
