Notícia

KIM INOKUCHI MAINTAINS HER FOCUS TO WIN

Por CBTM

Fifteen year old Kim Inokuchi was the player to win the closest group contest in the singles events on the first day of play, Thursday 12th April 2007, at the Liebherr Brazilian Open in Belo Horizonte.

Still young enough to play in the cadet age group category, she emerged in first place in group seven in the qualification stage of the Women's Singles event.

The teenager finished ahead of Chile's Melita Yanez and the Brazilian pairing of Claudia Ikezumi and Amanda Marques.

Opens Account
She opened her account by beating Claudia Ikezumi in five games before losing to Melita Yanez by the very narrowest of seven game margins.

It was a result that was to prove crucial. Claudia Ikezumi ended the programme by beating the Chilean in seven games whilst Kim Inokuchi finished her schedule of matches with victory in five games over Amanda Marques.

On games ratio Kim Inokuchi seized first place.

Calm
"I felt very calm when I played Claudia Ikezumi", said Kim Inokuchi who plays for the St Bernardo Club in São Paulo; also, she started the contest with a degree of confidence.

"The last time I played Claudia I won and she was under more pressure than me today", continued the Brazilian teenager. "In Brazil, she's ranked higher than me and I'm younger; also, I've been training really hard in recent weeks so I was well prepared for the match."

Reversal
In the opening match the pressure was on her adversary but in the second contest the situation was reversed.

"I led by three games to one against Melita Yanez", reflected Kim Inokuchi. "Then she started to play better and she recovered to level at three games all; having had a good lead I felt the pressure in the seventh game and I think that's the main reason why I lost."

Defeat but Kim Inokuchi is a bright girl, she's intelligent and she put the defeat down to experience. The main factor is that the reverse was resigned to history, she came back strongly in her final contest to beat Amanda Marques.

First Time
"Even though Amanda is from Brazil, I've never played her before", said Kim Inokuchi. "She's a similar age to me, I felt confident and I managed to win."

Korea
Success for Brazil but it was Korea who dominated the qualification stage of the Women's Singles event. Park Cha Ra, An Cho Rong and Moon Bo Sun all emerged as group winners, whilst in the two remaining groups Japan's Yuki Nonaka and Carla Nouwen of the Netherlands finished proceedings in first place.

Russian Success
Meanwhile, in the Men's Singles qualification stage it was very much according to plan; the only player seeded to finish his group in first place and didn't achieve the goal was Mexico's Marcos Madrid.

He lost to Russia's Grigori Vlassov but beat Rodrigo Kojima to finish in second place.

Europeans Through
First place for Russia whilst for France there were three first places; Adrien Mattenet, Abdel-Kader Salifou and Vincent Baubet all finished in top spot with further success for the European camp coming from Germany's Steffen Mengel and Austria's Michael Pichler.

Smiles for the continent of Europe and there was also good reason for both Asia and Latin America to feel contentment. Korea's Han Ji Min and Brazil's Bruno Anjos both won their respective groups.

ITTF - Ian Marshall