Individuals
WBF competition for individuals requires that everyone use the same bidding system, even if they play briefly with a regular partner. The stipulated system is published in advance.
These two tournaments for Individuals continue the series of World Masters Individual Championships inaugurated 1992 and contested every four years from 2000. In seven renditions no one has won either event twice. The fields are invitational rather representative. (IMSA and WBF both interpreted the 2008 medals nationally, however.)
Unusually, the Individuals in Beijing were played on two widely separated days, with one session on opening Friday and two sessions on the next Thursday, before and after five days of preliminary matches in the Teams events.
| Event | Gold | Silver | Bronze | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Individual | Tor Helness | 58.66% | Geir Helgemo | 55.27% | Andrey Gromov | 53.75% |
| Women Individual | Catarina Midskog | 57.51% | Anne-Fréderique Lévy | 57.13% | Yan Ru | 55.10% |
- Open
There were 36 men in the Open field, including seven from host China and five from France. Tor Helness of Norway scored 58.66%, far ahead of his regular partner Geir Helgemo in second place. Helness enjoyed a big lead from the first session when he scored 62%. Helgemo was the Open winner in 1996.
- Women
There were 24 players in the Women field including six from host China. Catarina Midskog of Sweden scored 57.51% for a narrow win over Anne-Fréderique Lévy. Lévy compiled a big lead during a huge first session (69%), with the eventual gold and bronze medalists standing third and fourth. Three current members of the China national team (second at the Games) ranked fourth, seventh, and eleventh. The bronze medalist joined them for their first world championship in the 2009 Venice Cup.
Read more about this topic: Bridge At The 1st World Mind Sports Games
Famous quotes containing the word individuals:
“Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and leads them in practise to respect individuals under the pretext of respecting order itself.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“... as women become free, economic, social factors, so becomes possible the full social combination of individuals in collective industry. With such freedom, such independence, such wider union, becomes possible also a union between man and woman such as the world has long dreamed of in vain.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)