The mother-and-son duo of Svetlana Zilberman and Misha Zilberman continued to impress with a first round win at the 2025 European Championships in Horsens, Denmark.
The 66-year-old Svetlana and her son Misha passed their opening mixed doubles test with relative ease as they beat Sweden’s Jakob Ekman/Nathalie Wang 21-19 21-11.
However, Misha lost his opening round match in men’s singles against England’s Harry Huang, 22-20 21-14.
The Zilbermans face a difficult second round as they run into Thom Gicquel/Delphine Delrue.
Among the close matches on the opening day was Rory Easton/Lizzie Tolman’s victory over Ruben Garcia/Lucia Rodriguez. In a back-and-forth battle, the English pair came through with an impressive 16-21 21-16 21-19 win.
Maiken Fruergaard
Maiken Fruergaard, 29, is playing her final international tournament before hanging up her racket. In her last European Championships, she’s teaming up with debutant Natasja P Anthonisen. In their first round, they faced Anna Kupca/Jekaterina Romanova from Austria. The Danes were in control throughout, winning comfortably 21-10 21-14.
Mateusz Golas, the 2024 European Junior Champion from Poland, received a wild card for the Championships. He put in a strong performance against Gustav Bjorkler from Sweden. After splitting the first two games 21-19 19-21, the Swede proved too strong in the decider, taking it 21-10.
Lucas Renoir and Mael Cattoen
The biggest upset of the day came from Lucas Renoir and Mael Cattoen, who surprisingly knocked out No.5 seeds Andreas Søndergaard and Jesper Toft, 12-21 21-19 21-18. The two French players were visibly thrilled after the match:
“We are so happy right now, just so happy about our performance.”
It didn’t look like an upset in the making after the Danes dominated the first game 21-12.
“We were just lifting so much, and they were attacking very good, so it was difficult for us. But we changed it, and we didn’t give them the attack easily.”
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