Midway through event two

Hmm, them running the tourney on German time meant that it started a fair bit earlier than I anticipated, so wasn't able to get much out yesterday. Bit of a surprising result with Madars Razma reaching the final to shove himself into Grand Prix contention, in an event where Erik Middelkoop commenting that we had eleven different nationalities winning boards. Would it be that hard a stretch to see sixteen different nationalities? Let's have a think, obviously it'd require quite a specific draw, but let's go with:

Netherlands - MvG
Scotland - Wright
Wales - Price
England - now who is the best English player right now? Let's just put Durrant
Poland - Ratajski
Northern Ireland - Gurney
Germany - Clemens
Australia - Whitlock
Belgium - van den Bergh
Austria - Suljovic
Portugal - de Sousa
South Africa - Petersen

That's twelve, and nobody would blink in the slightest if any of those won a board at all, even if in Whitlock's case it's based on experience and track record rather than current form (shove in Heta if you like). Then you need four more. Krcmar won his board yesterday (and is at it again having turned over Ratajski and Lowe already today). Sedlacek did. Razma obviously did. Labanauskas is a world quarter finalist. Lennon and O'Connor have reached tour finals. Any of the Spanish lads can do so on their day (Noguera did yesterday, while Reyes and Alcinas at least have that peak level). Jeff Smith absolutely can. Kai Fan Leung is dangerous enough on his day. That's plenty of options to go with.

I'll post a FRH rankings update at the end of the day, one thing to note is that Dimitri, on account of his Matchplay win not aging, is up into the top five already, and that Wright is now within 50k of MvG for the top spot - it'd require him running hotter than the sun to close that down before the Grand Prix, but it's entirely possible that he could claim the number 1 spot at the Grand Prix - if he binks it, I don't think there's anything Michael can do to stay at number one.