Luckless Gaultier into squash world championships semi-finals
Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Gregory Gaultier, perhaps the unluckiest player never to become world champion, moved closer to atonement with another fine performance, carrying him into the semi-finals on Friday.
Gaultier has three times been world runner-up and had five match points in one of those finals; now he is only one win from another world final after a straight games win over Daryl Selby, his fourth in a row.
"I am in the best shape of my life," the second-seeded Frenchman reckoned after a 11-7, 11-4, 12-10 success over the 13th seeded Englishman.
It lasted 60 minutes but was sufficiently economical to suggest he will remain in good enough shape for tougher tests to come.
The next will be against Mohamed El Shorbagy, the young Egyptian who caused one world championship upset in the semi-finals last year, and caused another in the quarter-finals this time.
El Shorbagy did that by beating James Willstrop, the third-seeded former world number one from England, by three games to one, resisting a dangerous fourth game surge by the Yorkshireman which had started noisily to engage a partisan home crowd.
It was Willstrop whom El Shorbagy beat in the 2012 world championships in Doha, carrying him to a final in which he was three points from becoming a long odds world champion.
"It's not over yet," El Shorbagy said after winning 12-10, 11-6, 2-11, 11-9, coming back from 7-9 down in the fourth game, and concluding the match on a penalty point.
He has already enlisted some home support for that tussle -- by generous words about his opponent, and by advertising the strength of his English connections after eight years in education in the country.
"I just want to congratulate James," the 22-year-old said.
"He will be a father in a few days time. Going backwards and forwards between Leeds and here each day -- no-one can do that. I want to congratulate him on playing as well as he did. He had so much going on in his head."
Willstrop viewed it differently.
"I lost context, I lost perspective. It's hugely disappointing," he said.
But Gaultier had another take on it.
"I became a father recently, and I think that my baby is better than being world champion," he said.
Indeed that sentiment seems to have done much for Gaultier's variable temperament, which has improved in the last year, prompting a question as to whether 2013 was going to be his year.
"I would like to say yes," he said. "But the competition is tough. I come here with a lot of motivation and confidence, and I am just going to give it my best shot."
Gaultier takes on Shorbagy on Saturday after Ramy Ashour, the defending champion from Egypt, has contested the other semi-final against Nick Matthew, the former world champion from England.
