Avrupa Yolcuları

Elemelere hazırlandığımız süre boyunca bizden önce Avrupa Şampiyonası'na giden Türk Milli Takımları ile ilgili bilgilerin ne kadar eksik olduğunu bir kez daha fark ettik. Malum A Ligi 1991'den beri oynanıyor yani Türkiye ilk kez ilk12 arasına girdi. Ancak bizden öncesine döndüğümüzde waterpolo-world.com 'un editörü sevgili dostum Wolfgang Philipps önemli bir destek verdi.

Wolfgang'in Adrian Vasiliu'nun Polo de la A la Z isimli 1999'da yayınlanan kitabından derlediği bilgileri aynen aşağıya geçiyorum...

Avrupa Şampiyonassına katılan Türk takımları ve durumları şöyle;


1966

Mustafa Acet, Erdal Acet, Ugur Cilingiroglu, Gunduz Gokce, Mithat Hantal, Ayhan Karatas, Behcet Kurtic, Umit Oguzoglu, Bora Oukok, Ahmet Ozizin, Ayatac Pekkocak.

1966 Utrecht (NED): 16th place, open competition with 17 teams. Britain was out after a 5th place in the preliminary round group matches; Turkey finished last in the round-robin matches for the places 13-16, but gained a 2-2 tie against Ireland.

PS: Only 11 players per team until 1980!

1987

M. Cakir, Tug Ebrem, Su Selduz, I. Delemen, T. Buker, Seygun Selduz, H. Ozfer, Atil Ertan, Ahmet Ertan, C. Ates, S. Turk, Turgut Ebrem, A. Oszoy.

1987 Strasbourg (FRA) 16th place, but here the competition of Group C was held during the big European Swimming Championships was well. So Turkey was only battling for the places 15 to 19 on location, but in official LEN records these matches count as European Championships appearance like the two other ones. Turkey beat Switzerland 11-4 and Malta 11-8 in a single round-robin with all five involved teams.


1991

Cem Kocturk, Turgut Ebrem, Hakan Oralkan, Ismail Delemen, Tarkan Sakalir, Saygun Seldez, Turgut Kabaca, Vaahar Algin, Yaman Tunc, Alp Olcaytu, Safak Kadioglou, Kerem Olcaytu, Ali Oszoy.

1991 Athens (GRE): 14th place in a 16-team-tournament. There were probably qualifiers before the Championships, but I do not know for sure. Turkey beat Great Britain 9-7 and tied Denmark 11-11 in the round-robin matches for the places 13-16.

After Athens, there were 12-team-tournaments with separate B Championships