Janet De Botton is columnist of The Spectator, the ancient British weekly magazine established in 1828. With her teammates, David Burn, Thomas Charlsen, Thor Erik Hoftaniska, Artur Malinowski, and Nick Sandqvist, Janet won the 2013 edition of the Shapiro Spring Foursomes, the most important open team event of Britannia, played yearly at Stratford upon Avon and dedicated to the memory of Boris Shapiro.
Second place for Sandra Penfold, defeated 77-61 in final: Sandra Penfold, Kalin Karaivanov, Nevena Senior, Rumen Trendafilov.
The winners’ path started with a triangle against Kane, +31 (Helen Kane Danny Kane, Stephen Male, Mike McGinley), and Feldman, +42 (Jill Feldman, Simon Cope, Ed Jones, Tom Paske).
It was then the time of Ewart with a fine +66 (David Ewart, Sarah Dunn, Jason & Justin Hackett, Gunnar Hallberg, Alex Hydes), but after the rainbow had to come the gale: beaten by Green, -48 (Stephen Green, Roger Bryant, Rob Helle, Simon de Wijs).
The double elimination knock-out format have two inestimable qualities: comeback and vengeance. If your first lost was by misfortune there will be another chance to come back and demonstrate how much strong you actually was; the second merit of this formula is that no matter how long is your row of victories, soon or later you have to face again the stronger of your victim, or the strong team who beat them after you.
Janet’s comeback started against McIntosh, +10 (Dan McIntosh, Andy Bowles, Chris Cooper, John Howard), and continued against Mossop (David Mossop, John Carroll, Tommy Garvey, Andrew McIntosh, David Price, Colin Simpson), then in quarter final it came the vengeance: +63 against the still undefeated Seale (Catherine Seale, Chris Jagger, Ian Pagan, Jerry Stamatov), the team who had beaten Green.
In semi-final Janet met Tøndel: Petter Tøndel, Erik Berg, Steffen Simonsen, Odin Svendsen. These were hard people come from Norway, as the Vikings of Harald the Stern who conquered York in September of 1066, but she wasn’t in York that time, and beat them as well: just +1, ok, but always a victory.
In the PunchBowl, the tourney for twice defeated teams from Shapiro, the victory went to Nelson (Kath & Alan Nelson, David Robinson, Jeff Smith) over Wilson (Alan Wilson, David S Jones, Nick Smith, Trevor Ward).
The Hamilton Cup was won by Paul Barton, Samantha Punch, Tim Rees & Brian Spears. Second place to Paul and Jason Hackett, Alex Hydes, Edward Levy.
Results: http://www.ebu.co.uk/events/?eventid=16
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Paolo Enrico Garrisi