It was a big surprise when the BSC 70 Linz was crowned Austrian badminton champion for the first time in 29 years in Pressbaum yesterday. After the surprising 5:3 home win over the season’s dominators a week ago, yesterday after 4:4 a so-called “Golden Set” decided the outcome of the “Best-of-3” final series. “We had fortune goddess Fortuna on our side,” said BSC board member Roland Hechenberger. Because the lot fell after the 4: 4 on the mixed, in which the Linz top Slovenians Petra Polanc and Miha Ivanic brought the seventh title in the club’s history in dry cloths with 21:14.
Appointment as a bone of contention
The fact that it was Polanc and Ivanic of all people was symbolic. Because the Pressbaumer had put the second final game on Sunday specifically to weaken the BSC, at least according to Hechenberger. “We at BSC Linz had openly communicated that we wanted Saturday because Polanc and Ivanic would then fly away to a tournament in Mexico,” he said of unsportsmanlike behavior. The Lower Austrians justified it with the availability of the hall. However. But since Polanc and Ivanic wanted to be there in Pressbaum and the Slovenian association gave the go-ahead, they didn’t fly to Mexico until this morning. “The problem was less the willingness to find a later flight at short notice before Easter,” explained Hechenberger. It succeeded.
The Linz championship plan could not have worked out otherwise if Polanc, Ivanic and other aces had been missing from the BSC in a third final game in a week. “We would only have been there with a skeleton force,” Hechenberger admits.
Pressbaumer Déjà vu
Not only because of the circumstances of the final, the title had something fairytale-like for the people of Linz. After voluntarily going into the second division, the club only returned to the top flight two years ago. “We wanted to find ourselves as a club below, to reorganize ourselves,” said Hechenberger. You didn’t expect to make it back to the top in such a short time.
There was a painful déjà vu for the Pressbaumer: Last year they had lost the league title in their own hall in a “golden set” – at that time against Askö Traun. The people of Linz didn’t care about the open “vice wounds” in the hosts given the previous history. They celebrated yesterday in Vienna with the cup and their winners. Polanc and Ivanic then took off for Mexico this morning.
Source: Nachrichten
