BLACKPOOL

A little more information from last Friday evening. In the Senior (Over 35’s) Ballroom Championship there were 168 couples with 11 couples from USA. Two USA couples made it to the semi final (top 12) – David and Liva Wright (MA) and Xingmin and Katerina Lu (CA). This was truly an international event as you will see from the results: A couple from BELGIUM took 1st place. 2nd GERMANY, 3rd RUSSIA, 4th THE NETHERLANDS, 5th FRANCE and 6th USA Xingmin and Katerina Lu.

In the British Professional “Rising Stars” Latin Competition there were 259 couples. 25 couples from USA were entered and 6 of them made the Quarter Final (top 24). The Results were: 1st Russia, 2nd Italy, 3rd USA – Denis Podolskiy and Yuliya Kushnirenko (CA), 4th Russia, 5th Russia and 6th USA Yegor Novikov and Ekaterina Zakharoff (WA).

As reported earlier the USA won, for the third time, the International Invitation Professional Team Match.
This was an interesting and exciting event. Many great couples and champions performed putting on what has been described as the best Team Match yet. The Team USA Bizokas/Demidova, Fung/Muravyeva, Cocchi/Zagoruychenko, Katsevman/Manusova won all of the five Ballroom dances and were second in four of the Latin dances and tied with Team Europe in the Jive they received a total of 298.3 points. Team Europe: Gozzoli/Daniute (Italy), Krapez/Nigro (Slovenia), Formica/Lebedew (Germany), Malitowski/Leunis (Poland) were a very close second with 297.8 points. Team Great Britain: (who held the title for 30+ years) Boyce/Boyce, Short/Channa, Ivanets/Bellinger-Ivenets, Rebula/Heron finished 3rd with 290.8 points. Team Asia: Shoji/Shoji (Japan), Zhiratkov/Novozhilova-Popovic (Hong Kong), Park/Maidiuk (Korea), Ning/Ding Fang (China) were 4th with 289.8 points – only 1 point behind Great Britain.
Following the Team Match it was announced the Eugene Katsevaman and Maria Manusova were retiring as Professional Competitors. An emotional retirement letter from Eugene and Maria was read by Chairman Marcus Hilton. Eugene and Maria won the British Youth Latin Championship in 1998. Then as Amateurs they placed in many Championship finals. They were USA Amateur Latin Champions for many years. Turning Professional they placed in many finals. In 2009 they performed their spectacular show at the Hawai’i Star Ball.
They will continue their career teaching, judging and performing.