The third edition of the IWT Norwegian Open kicks off this weekend, with top players taking the trip (for most at least) north aiming to take glory and a share of the 500 EURO prize pot.
The Men A Elite is a bumper 16-draw due to a merging of those who had entered this and the Men B draw.
The number one seed was World No 17 Matthew Davidson, but unfortunately he had to pull out on Wednesday due to COVID/flu that he was not able to shake off before the start.
He was due to play Greg Lorkiewicz, a Pole who has lived in Norway for years and a very strong racketlon player, by rights probably a top 50 and top 30 player, heights he has reached before.
He is now a little less active on the world tour due to injury issues and eight (!) kids, meaning he is ranked 99, one out of the seedings. The odds probably favoured the Brit, but it was a very unlucky draw for Greg, so he is definitely not the luckiest player to progress to the quarters with a bye.
In the quarters, he will likely face Magnus Bäckström, a strong Swedish player who plays Swiss veteran Marc-André Rauber.
Brit Joel Durston, who brought racketlon to Norway and headed up Norge Racketlon for four years before handing over to Ola Ulmo, faces Greg’s brother Bart, a reasonably sporadic presence on tour but a strong player with wins against Malte Thyregod and Roland Pichler in 2018, so the favourite here.
Magnus Edby, the fourth seed, faces off against a racketlon newcomer in Tristan Champion, a Frenchman who lives in Norway. Tristan possesses ‘champion’ (sorry, had to) table tennis, having formerly played in the national set up in France, but in the other sports the Swede will likely have too much.
In the other half of the draw Ola and Brit Keith Lesser look clear favourites to set up another close encounter.
Keith begins against Denmark team player Dan Holck-Hansen and Ola against Dutch player Rachid Ben Charif.
Meanwhile, home hopes Bjørn Andersen and Sindre Luther, debutants to the Norway team bumped up to the Nations Cup in the World Championships in Rotterdam, play, respectively, World No. 100 Anders Lätt from Sweden and racketlon veteran and former soldier Pekka Tennilä, who is driving all the way from Stockholm, after a ferry from Finland (mind, nothing on his 28-hour drive to a tournament in Zurich!).
If Ola and Keith do meet in the semis, it will mark the third match in what is developing into an intriguing rivalry, with both players of similar age and competing in the Seniors +40 category, where they have met in the quarter finals and semi finals of the Worlds last two years.
They will meet in the final of this category here too, if things go to seeding and they both win their first two matches (although in the Seniors +40 Ola likely plays Greg in the semi, a common and very close final match up of Norway’s domestic tournaments).
Ola and Keith’s head-to-head is one apiece, with the difference being a huge swing between Keith winning table tennis to just 18 in their 2024 encounter, which he eventually lost, and then an incredible 21-3 in their match in Rotterdam this year.
The women’s elite comprises World No. 6 Adeline Kilchenmann from Swtizerland, Kaisu Anttila from Finland, Mathilde Deleuran from Denmark and Swede Saga Jönsson Slättsjö, in a round robin.
Adeline has had a busy and strong year, rising from ten in the world in singles at the end of last year to six now, with wins in elite doubles at the German Open and Racket Masters Augsburg and silvers in Turkey and Austria, as well as a mixed silver in Turkey. Could this be the chance for that elusive elite singles glory?
While she definitely goes in as favourite, she should face stiff competition from the Dane and Finn, 33rd and 34th in the world respectively (they actually traded places last ranking update). But these rankings could well be higher – only two of the top 25 have fewer recorded tournaments in the system.
Mathilde comes into the tournament on the back of some very strong singles results – a win at the Swiss Open and silvers in the B and Girls u21 from Rotterdam. Her badminton is particularly strong, regularly just dropping a point or two in the badminton sets and even beating Holly Ranson to 13 in the Girls u21 final in the summer.
Meanwhile, Kaisu won the Elite Doubles and a singles bronze in Finland earlier in the year and has impressive results against top ten players, for example taking World Champion Myriam Enmer to 12 7 in the tennis at this year’s Swiss Open and beating Stephanie Chung in Finland two years ago.
And lastly Saga Jönsson Slättsjö is stepping up a category into the elite category. It is, funnily enough, her first event outside of the World Championships, where she has played in the Girls u21 the last two years, finishing 5th and 4th out of six.
Whoever wins, it will be their first elite title!
Most of Friday doubles day will be taken up by the mixed category, a round robin of five evenly matched pairs: Norwegians Victoria T (who cannot play singles unfortunately) and Ola Ulmo, Finns Kaisu Anttila and Pekka Tennilä, Saga Jönsson Slättsjö and Ignacio Sevillano (a Spaniard in Norway gamely stepping in last minute for Matthew Davidson), Swiss pair Adeline Kilchenmann and Marc-André Rauber, and Mathilde Deleuran and Joel Durston.
In the men’s doubles, the effective final is probably in the first match, with Gothenburg pair Magnus Bäckström and Magnus Edby facing off against brothers Greg and Bart Lorkiewicz. In the other match, second seeds Dan Holck-Hansen and Sindre Luther play Joel Durston and Bjørn Andersen.
In the women’s doubles, Adeline and Victoria play Kaisu and Mathilde, in what should be a very tight encounter.
Additional reporting from Leigh Sands.
