RUSSIAN OPEN GRAND PRIX BADMINTON CHAMPIONSHIPS 2008 Russian Open Badminton Championships 2008 will be scheduled from November 04 – 09, 2008 at Moscow, Russia. This event was sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation as a Grand Prix tournament. The total prize money is USD 50,000.00. The prize money will be distributed in accordance with the BWF Grand Prix regulations. http://www.badm.ru/news/anonces/753
Unfortunately, Russian Open tournament level is decreased from GP Gold (US$120,000) last year to GP (US$50,000) for this year edition. 2007 Winners : MS -- Lu Yi (CHN) WS -- Wang Yihan (CHN) MD -- Kristof Hopp/Ingo Kindervater (GER) WD -- Du Jing/Yu Yang (CHN) XD -- Robert Mateusiak/Nadiezda Kostiuczyk (POL)
The entry list of this tournament has already released by BWF, most of them are home players. No any Asian country will send their players to Moscow. M/Q reports : http://www.internationalbadminton.org/Russia/Russian%20M&Q%20Report%20Version%20%201.xls
Taken from BWF website, the draw of Russian Open 2008 has been postponed to Wednesday (22 October), and some players withdrew from this tournament : MS -- Kestutis Navickas (LTU), Stefan Wojcikiewicz (CAN), Maxime Renault (FRA), Georgios Charalambidis (GRE) WS -- Karen Foo Kune (MRI)
Tournamentsoftware for the Russian GP 2008 is now up and running . And the tournamentsoftware for the Russian GP 2008 is now up and running: click here .
I don't think interests on this tourney will be high. At least I would have 1 week of rest Next week's NZ Open is quite relaxing as well since only a few INA players are involved.
More distribution of wealth for non-Asian players is good for badminton worldwide... I see this as a good thing... Let the Eastern Europeans prosper in badminton... We will then see them clamoring for the Olympics to still be included in the Olympics [forever]... A good thing for Badminton [overall]... The Asians want to save their money for tournaments within the Asian continent this time... The US$ exchange rate is killing most of our Asian currencies... Ticket prices to Moscow are just too high for a single GP level tournament...
Today's qualification will stage MS, WS, XD matches between local players and small number of Ukrainian shuttlers. This GP tourney is full of lesser known names with Dicky Palyama and Pi Hongyan as MS and WS top-seed respectively.
2008 Russian Open: So little time for Misha Zilberman[13] to rest between his MD & MS . Lost my PAW on Misha Zilberman [13] in the MS. Didn't realised that he played a rubber match in his MD just 2 hours before he played his MS. So surprised that he has been given so little time to rest. .
