Things progress pretty much as expected in the European qualifiers. Denmark and Germany are through, while Sweden and surprise runner-up India battle for the 3rd place tomorrow (Sunday). My guess (and hope) is that Sweden will take the third slot.
How come nobody menttioned India's win over England? That was fantastic. Such a pity they couldn't beat Sweden.
Yes, the 3-2 win over England was rather an upset. Personally, I'm not too sad that they lost to Sweden though... But honestly, Sweden doesn't have a strong team this year so I'm actually surprised that India couldn't put up more resistance.
Mag, how many regions are there in the Thomas Cup? Just Europe (including more western Asian countries like India) and Asia (including the eastern or Pacific rim countries)? I take it that the TC organizers determined that there would not be sufficient competition from the new world to add an Americas region?
Yeah, as Pecheur said, there's the Pan-American qualifier too. And it's not surprising that American media haven't mentioned much about it during the Olympics -- it was held in November last year. It's a bit confusing though, because the winners, USA and Italy (yeah I know it's weird they're in that zone), went on to the European qualifiers... And it gets even more confusing if you consider that both Canada and Peru played in the European qualifiers, not in the Pan-American.
Things are not as confusing as it seems. I don't know about Peru, but Canadian players have enough ranking points that they are allowed to bypass the 1st stage (ie the Pan-Am stage) and go directly into the semi final stage (ie the Europe stage). As for how do we know whether a country has enough ranking points to bypass the 1st stage, that is a good question. I don't know.
