1st - 5th May
A New Champion is Crowned
Over 17 days we witnessed a World Snooker Championship packed with incidents and achievements. It included two maximum breaks, a protestor disrupting a match, amazing comebacks, and a new World Champion. Belgium's Luca Brecel brought with him a new brand of free-flowing, exciting snooker and it is exactly what the popular sport required this year. Earlier the two semi-finals could not have been more contrasting. Brecel produced an incredible comeback with his fearless play, while the second match involving Mark Selby was much more closer. Brecel beat Selby by 18-15 and it is also the first time a player from mainland Europe has won a World Snooker Championship.
On Saturday we have the start of the Giro d'Italia, a three-week multi-stage UCI World Tour that is one of the main tours before the Tour de France. To lead up to it, Germany hosted a day race on Monday. The Eschborn-Frankfurt forms part of the UCI WorldTour with the top honours going Søren Kragh Andersen (DEN). Uzbekistan's capital city Tashkent hosted the world's best wrestlers in the discipline of Pankration, a technique that makes it very similar to Mixed Martial Arts. The Senior World Championship featured from Tuesday to Thursday with the full results in the following link.
Manchester in England hosted the Professional Darts Corporation Premier League night on Thursday. Mark Smith (ENG) sealed a play-off place with his third nightly win. Italy produced an outstanding performance to top the medal table at the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup Shotgun hosted in Cairo, Egypt. Fifteen medals were shared between ten nations.
Hosts Great Britain has won the 2023 International Ice Hockey Federation Men's World Championships Division I, Group A in Nottingham. The champions beat Italy by 5-3. To round the week off, we had the first World Athletics Diamond League Meeting with Doha opening the season. There were meeting records for Kristjan Ceh (SLO) in discuss, Berihu Aregawi (ETH) in the women's 10,000m, and Sha’Carri Richardson (USA) in the women's 100m.
Until next time, have a great weekend in sport.