TERRY ZHANG FIGHTS HARD AT THE CANADIAN OLYMPIC QUALIFIER:

Last month I reported that based on his results at the Canada Cup National League finals in Quebec, that Terry had earned a National Coach "wild card" selection for the first Canadian team qualification event to see who represents Canada in Beijing.  Well, this past January 5-6, Terry travelled to Vancouver with Coach Damianov where he competed against 13 of Canada’s top players.

In the first round the competition was split into two round-robin pools of seven players.  Terry finished 6^th in his pool with a record of 1 win/ 6 losses.  He defeated Quebec’s Bryan Michaud who was rated at 2931 some 225 points higher than Terry.  In this first pool he also took a game off of Canadian #4 Pradeban Peter-Paul plus he extended each of BC’s Andre Ho and Quebec’s Yang Jiang to five games.

Round two saw the top 7 players contest positions 1-7 and the last 7 places 8-14.  In this second round Terry again played very well with a record of 3 wins/ 4 losses.  This tied him for positions 10-12 where he unfortunately wound up 12^th based on the tie-break rules.

So, finishing 12 out of 14 may not sound too hot but ya gotta remember that at 13 about to turn 14 he was by far the youngest player in the event.

Well-done Terry!  Complete results can be found at www/ctta.ca

Ron Edwards Reporting