Raymond Ceulemans

Raymond Ceulemans
Personal details
birthday	12th July 1937 (age 83)
place of birth	Lier
nationality	Belgium
Nickname (s)	Mister 100
Active time	1961-2001
Achievements Unless otherwise stated, the information relates to the “three cushion” discipline.
Best GD: 2.307
(1997)
Maximum series (HS): 28
(1998)
Best Game: 5,000 (40 pts in 8 records)
(1997)
World Championships:
33 ×
Continental Championships:
44 ×
Other tournaments:
61 × Belgian champion + 57 others
World rankings
Highest WRL place:	1
Current WRL location:	-
Societies)
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Raymond Ceulemans (born July 12, 1937 in Lier ) is a Belgian billiards player .

Raymond Ceulemans is 33-time world champion , 44-time European champion , was 61-time Belgian champion and is a national hero in his home country . He continued the dominance of top Belgian players in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s , which René Vingerhoedt had begun in the 1940s and 1950s. His unique collection of titles and the fact that he dominated the billiards scene for over 40 years and is still playing at an international level at the age of 83 justify the designation "the world's best billiards player of all time". Players like Frédéric Caudron continue the tradition of top Belgian players in carom billiards.

Life

At the age of 7 he started playing on his father's “coffee table” at home. At the age of 15 he joined a billiards club in Antwerp , but also continued to play excellent football. He learned the profession of diamond cutter . In 1958 he was discovered by a second division soccer club - but there was no change, Raymond Ceulemans decided on billiards.

He won his first national title in 1961 at the age of 23 when he became three- cushion champion in Belgium. In 1962 he was three-cushion European champion and in 1963 he won the first world title in three-cushion. From then on, he dominated the three cushion world and won the World Cup for ten years in a row until 1973. He also won the title from 1975 to 1980, 1983, 1985, 1987 and 1990. In 1986, 1987 and 1990 he also secured the overall World Cup Three-cushion. At the 1978 World Cup tournament in Las Vegas, he achieved an average number of points of 1.679 per recording and thus the highest tournament GD up to that point and the highest World Cup average, which was only surpassed in 1997 by Torbjörn Blomdahl .

He retired from the sport for some time in 1992 for health reasons, but then returned in 1993 and won his last World Cup in 1995. At the age of 60 he played his best game in 1997 (40 points in 8 recordings) and his highest GD of 2.307.

In 2001, at the age of 64, he sensationally won the three-cushion world championship again. Since his one hundredth international tournament victory in Las Vegas , he has been called Mister 100 in billiards circles .

On October 27, 2012 he won his 300th game in the Dutch honor division against the German national player Stefan Galla .

At the “Trophy of Legends” held in Eeklo , Belgium in June 2018, the 80-year-old prevailed in the final against his “eternal competitor” and friend Ludo Dielis with 40:10 in 29 shots.

successes

• Three-cushion world champion ( UMB ) 1963–1973, 1975–1980, 1983, 1985, 1990, 2001 (21 ×)
• Overall three- cushion World Cup winner ( BWA ) 1986, 1987, 1990
• Three-cushion World Cup , 9 individual victories
• World Champion in cover 1968, 1976–1979, 1984 (6 ×)
• World champion in Cadre 47/1 1976
• World champion in the free game 1969
• World champion in pentathlon 1965, 1972, 1974, 1975
• European three- cushion champion 1962–1971, 1973–1983, 1987, 1992 (23 times)
• European Champion in cover 1963–1967, 1969, 1970, 1977–1979, 1984–1986 (13 times)
• European champion in cadre 71/2 1963, 1966, 1968, 1971, 1979
• European champion in Cadre 47/1 1976
• European pentathlon champion in 1973, 1979
• European pentathlon championships for national teams : 1969, 1971, 1975, 1992 1977, 1983 1979, 1981
• Coupe d'Europe : 1967-1969, 1986
• Trophy of Legends: 2018
• Belgian three-cushion championship : 24 × 8 × 4 ×

Swell:

Honors

• In 1978 he was voted Sportsman of the Year in Belgium .
• In 2001 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Billiard Congress of America .
• In 2003 he was by King Albert II. To Knight knighted.

Works

• Raymond Ceulemans: Mister 100. Het driebandenspel . Van Belle Verlag, Brussels 1979, ISBN 90-70252-07-4 .
• Ben de Graaf, Raymond Ceulemans: Het groene rijk van Raymond Ceulemans . Edition Helios, Antwerp 1982, ISBN 90-333-0053-2 .

Web links

Commons : Raymond Ceulemans  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Raymond Ceuleman's homepage
• From the sphere I can tell whether it will rain Spiegel-Interview, issue 48/1987
• “The one who dances with the balls” report on Ceulemans from WDR on May 6, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Markus Schönhoff: Raymond Ceulemans: The legend turns eighty! Kozoom , July 8, 2017, accessed July 8, 2017 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Raymond Ceulemans-Hall of Fame Inductees, 1997-2001. Billiard Congress of America , 2001, archived from the original on December 29, 2016 ; accessed on December 29, 2016 .  
3. ↑ Markus Schönhoff: The Top Highlights in October ( German ) Kozoom.com. October 30, 2012. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved on November 2, 2012.
4. ↑ Markus Schönhoff: Raymond Ceulemans (80) still the best! Kozoom, June 24, 2018, accessed July 1, 2018 .  
5. ↑ Achievements on Kozoom.com. Retrieved August 11, 2012