Raymond Steylaerts

Raymond Steylaerts
Personal details
birthday	April 3, 1933
place of birth	Antwerp
date of death	6th January 2011 (age 77)
Place of death	Middelkerke
nationality	Belgium
Active time	1954-1995
Achievements Unless otherwise stated, the information relates to the “three cushion” discipline.
World Championships:
6 × (art push)
Continental Championships:
14 × (art push)

Raymond Steylaerts (born April 3, 1933 in Antwerp ; † January 6, 2011 in Middelkerke ) was a Belgian billiard pusher and multiple world and European champion.

Career

Steylaert's international career began in 1954 at the age of 21 in Madrid at the Billard Artistique World Championship when he won the gold medal at the first attempt. He was also a respectable three- cushion player. In this discipline he won three Belgian titles. He was unlucky to meet his teacher René Vingerhoedt , who turned out to be one of his greatest opponents on his way. Later he had to compete with Raymond Ceulemans , the best billiard player ever. So he withdrew from the three cushion and concentrated on the art push.

The list of titles by Steylaerts is long. He won his first world title in La Plata (Bolivia) in 1970 , ahead of Carlos Tosi. A short era followed in which his compatriot Leo Corin won three world titles, but Steylaerts dominated again in 1979 with gold medals in The Hague Maubeuge , Heeswijk-Dinther , Acapulco and Mönchengladbach . At the world championships he won a total of six gold medals, one silver medal and four bronze medals. His European titles are even more impressive in number. It was, almost continuously, title holder between 1954 and 1995.

As a three- cushion player, Steylaerts was a global subtopper. He was runner-up at the 1964 World Cup in Ostend, behind Raymond Ceulemans who won. At the European Championships in Antwerp in 1957 he was third, after René Vingerhoedt and August Tiedtke , in 1963 in Brussels third behind Ceulemans and Johann Scherz and in Copenhagen in 1964 third, also behind Ceulemans and Scherz. In Vienna 1981 he made it to the finals, but there he had to bow to Ceulemans' superiority again. In his 41-year career, which he ended in 1995, he won a total of 38 international medals, making him one of the world's most successful billiards players.

In 2011, Steylaerts died at the age of 77 from sudden cardiac arrest in his apartment in Middelkerke.

successes

He is the record holder with six World Cup titles, 14 European Championship titles and 26 Belgian titles in the art push.

• Art push World Cup : 1970, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1987 1963 1966, 1972, 1973, 1995
• Kunstschlag EM : 1954–1957, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1973, 1975–1978, 1982, 1983 1950, 1951, 1968, 1969, 1981, 1987, 1995 1979, 1980, 1994
• Three-cushion European Championship : 1981 1957, 1963, 1964
• Belgian three-cushion championship : 1963, 1987, 1988 1958, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1979, 1990 1959, 1968, 1975, 1986

Web links

Commons : Raymond Steylaerts  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Films over Artistiek biljart - Trickshot and Fantasy Billiard Movies - BC De Deken; Remembering Raymond Steylaerts.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary. CIBA January 6, 2011, archived from the original on November 25, 2016 ; accessed on November 25, 2016 .  
2. ^ ^{A b c} Raymond Steylaerts (77): a phenomenon has gone. Kozoom, January 7, 2011, accessed November 25, 2016 .  
3. ↑ Achievements. Kozoom, accessed November 25, 2016 .