A Message From The President

Estoril, Portugal - 5th November 2005

Um Grande Campeonato! A truly great Championship!

Our delightful Portuguese hosts have welcomed us with open arms and have provided us with a superb venue, warm hospitality and an event that we will remember for a long time to come. I hope - I am sure we all hope - that they will not wait 10 years before inviting us to their wonderful country again for another Championship!

I would like to thank most warmly Herculano Ferreira, the President of the Portuguese Federation and, of course, our very dear friend José Manuel Soares de Oliveira for all they have done to ensure the great success of the Championship. I would also like to thank the Portuguese authorities and, in particular, the Mayor of Cascais, Antonio d'Orey Capucho, the Chairman of the Estoril Tourist Board, Duarte Nobre Guedes, and Rui Mourinha representing the President of the Instituto do Desporto de Portugal, as well as Manuel d'Orey Capucho and all the organizing committee for their support.

We have been fortunate indeed to have had the sponsorship offered by the Office of Tourism Estoril, the Municipality of Cascais, BPI, Europe Assistance, Companhia de Seguros Tranquilidade Vida, Banco Espirito Santo, the Instituto do Desporto de Portugal, and not forgetting Generali, who has been a generous sponsor of bridge for many years. We would also like to thank our partners the Estoril Congress Centre, Renault, Lavazza, Navigator, Océ, Viuva Lamego the Barros Porto and this wonderful Casino of Estoril to whom we owe this spectacular closing dinner and the show that will follow afterwards.

You will all, I am sure, recognise the enormous amount of work involved in the organisation of our Bridge Championships; the technology involved, the hospitality - there are so many aspects, many of them unseen by you, the players. There are many staff who have worked long and hard throughout this fortnight, in every field and I am very pleased to have the chance to thank them all personally through the medium of this Bulletin.

The Hospitality Team - Martine Schupp and Antonio Salgueiro with Annie Chekroun

The Bulletin Team, with its co-ordinator Jean Paul Meyer and Editor Brent Manley, Assistant Editors Mark Horton, Brian Senior, proof-reader Phillip Alder, photographer Ron Tacchi, layout editor George Georgopoulos and Internet Editor Fotis Skoularikis.

Our Line-up team, Corry & Jan Louwerse with Irena and Janek Chodorowski.

Scoring and Results - Tomas Brenning, Harvey Fox, Duccio Geronimi, Tommy Westman, Laila Leonhardt, Carl Ragnarsson & Marc van Beijsterfelt, using the BridgeMate system developed by Ron Bowland. I know you all enjoyed the service provided by this new and exciting technology.

The Internet Vu-Graph broadcasts were provided by Bridge Base Online and Swan Games.

The Press Room, ably overseen by Jan Swaan.

Behind the scenes on the technical side, Mark Newton co-ordinated the IT, keeping the computers linked and the Internet alive. Christine Francin, Anna Gudge and Carol von Linstow worked within the WBF Secretariat.

In the Vu-Graph, there was the Bridge Vision Team headed by Elisabeth Antelme with Hervé Lustman, Elisabeth Piganeau and the Vu-Graph team, led by Bernard Delange, with Paul Binisti and Bernadette Pasquier.

Fulvio Colizzi organized the equipment, and the duplication team of Monica Gorreri, Franco Crosta, José Julio Curado, Bo-Lennart Grahs and Hélène Vivier who dealt the many thousands of boards needed for the event’ and the team of caddies who distributed them amongst you so efficiently, led by Albert and Yvette O'Hana.

The excellent vugraph Commentators, who keep you so well entertained were Paul Chemla, Francisco Pereira Goncalves, Eric Kokish and Barry Rigal, with their co-ordinator Jean-Paul Meyer.

The World Bridge Federation is fortunate to have a very experienced team of Tournament Directors, led by its Chief, Max Bavin: Maurizio Di Sacco, Bernard Gignoux, Slawek Latala, Rui Marques, Jeanne van den Meiracker, José Perera de Sousa, Guillermo Poplawski and Matt Smith and Hans van Staveren.

We also have to thank the Appeals Committee, under the able Chairmanship of Joan Gerard: Jens Auken, Paul Chemla, Richard Colker, Jim Kirkham, Eric Kokish, Ernesto d'Orsi, Jean-Paul Meyer, Dan Morse, Jeffrey Polisner, Mario Reis and John Wignall, for their work. A special mention too for Grattan Endicott, the co-ordinator.

Ton Kooijman has overseen the entire operation with his usual care and skill, working tirelessly throughout the event as he always does with the unstinting and valuable and, it has seemed, omnipresent assistance of João Paes de Carrvalho.

Please, all of you, accept my personal thanks and the thanks of the Executive Council. We are fortunate indeed to have such a professional and dedicated team.

The bridge at the Championships has been - as we have come to expect from all of you - of a very high standard, with many close matches giving us plenty of excitement, as we have watched in the excellent auditorium; I have been impressed as always with your ethics, deportment and sportsmanship, and the spirit that you bring to our great sport.

It is with great pleasure that I congratulate the winners and the medallists, but I do not forget those amongst you who do not come up to the podium - you too are winners for taking part in a great Championship, and I thank you all for joining us here in Estoril.

For the future, we have the challenge of the World Bridge Championships in Verona next June - I hope you will all join us for this, the biggest of our Championship events and one that will provide challenging bridge in an excellent venue close to one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

And I am delighted that in 2007 we will be with our close friends, the Chinese Bridge Association as they will host the Bermuda Bowl in Shanghai … I am sure you will all be fighting hard to qualify for that Championship and that those of you who don't make your national team will want to come and play in the Transnational Open Teams just so that you can be with us in that amazing city. And later on, we can look forward to 2009 and the Bermuda Bowl in Brazil.

Thank you all for your attention - and we will see you next year!

Jose Damiani