WFDF 2016 World Ultimate and Guts Championship Reaches Quarterfinal Stage

The WFDF 2016 World Ultimate and Guts Championship reached the quarterfinal stage of the event beginning today, with the top seeds

in each division of play remaining largely intact.

The preliminary and play‐off rounds of the WUGC 2016 are beingheld at the University College London (UCL) Sports Ground in

London Colney. The tournament organizing committee, headed byUK Ultimate CEO Simon Hill and Tournament Director Jon Pugh, set

up 27 high‐quality grass competition pitches that cover a total areaof 143 acres. The opening ceremony was held on Sunday 19 June.

The final day's gold medal games will be held on Saturday 25 June atAllianz Park stadium, home of Rugby's reigning Premiership

Champions, Saracens RFC.

"It’s been an action‐packed week so far," stated WFDF PresidentRobert "Nob" Rauch.Despite a number of incredibly close and

spirited games, there have been few upsets in the first four days ofplay and we are heading into the play‐off rounds with most of thetop seeds intact.Spectators at the stadium or through broadcastshould be treated to a great day of Ultimate at the finals on Saturday.As our largest WorldChampionship ever, it has also been exciting to welcome for the first time a number of countriesto our premier event."

Slightly more than 3,000 athletes are participating in the event, representing 115 Ultimate teamsfrom 39 countries.Competition is being held in five divisions:mixed gender (30 teams), men’s(31), women’s (26), men’s masters (17), and women’s masters (11). In addition, there are 8teams competing in the discipline of Guts Frisbee.

For Ultimate in the mixed division, Canada (seeded1) will play Colombia (10), Australia (2) takes onJapan (3), USA (4) faces off against Philippines (7),and Great Britain (5) goes up against France (8). Inthe men’s division, it will be USA (1) vs. Colombia(10), Great Britain (2) vs. Australia (7), Canada (3) vs.Germany (4), and Japan (5) vs. Belgium (8).In thewomen’s division, Japan (1) will play Australia (5),

USA (2) takes on Switzerland (6), Canada (3) faces offagainst Russia (13), and Colombia (4) goes up againstGermany (11).Semi‐final matchups will be heldFriday and the finals played on Saturday.

In the masters’ division of Ultimate, play is now at the semi‐final level, with the finals to be heldFriday.In the men’s masters, Canada (1) will face off against Great Britain (8) and the USA (4) willtake on Denmark (5).In the women’s masters, it will be USA (1) vs. Japan (4) and Canada (2) vs.Australia (3).

For Guts, play resumes Friday with a semi‐final "play in" round for the fourth and fifth placeteams after round robin play, Great Britain and Germany 1.The winner of that game will take onUSA1 in the first semi‐final game, with Japan vs. USA2 in the other semi‐final. The winners of thesemi‐finals will compete for the gold medal at 1700 BST later in the day.

Over two dozen games have already been livestreamed throughout the week The game streamsare available at http://livestream.com, at http://wfdf.org/live, the WFDF Facebook page athttps://www.facebook.com/worldflyingdisc, WFDF’s youtube channel atwww.youtube.com/wfdfchannel, and the World Games channel athttp://channel.theworldgames.org/.A two hour broadcast will be televised in North America onSaturday 25 June on CBS Sports Network from 1600‐1800 EDT.

A total of 39 countries are competing in the2016 WUGC.These are: Australia, Austria,Belgium, Canada, Democratic Republic of

Congo, People’s Republic of China, Colombia,Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Spain,Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany,Hong Kong China, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy,Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands,New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland,Portugal, South Africa, Russian Federation,Singapore, Slovakia, Republic of Korea,Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates,

and USA.

What is Ultimate?

Ultimate is a non‐contact, self‐refereed team sport played with a flying disc (aka a Frisbee). Twoteams of seven players compete on a playing field about the same length as an American footballfield, but narrower. At each end of the playing field there is an end zone. Each team defends oneend zone. They score a goal if one of their players catches the disc in the opposite end zone. Theplayer with the disc is called the thrower. The thrower may not run with the disc. Instead theymove the disc by passing to teammates in any direction. The defensive team gets possession ofthe disc if an offensive team’s throw is not caught by a player of the same team. Then thedefensive team becomes the offensive team and can try to score in the opposite end zone. A keyelement of the game is that there are no referees and players make their own calls on the field,under a code known as "spirit of the game."

What is Guts Frisbee?

Guts is played by two teams of five players each. The playing field consists of two parallel goal‐lines 15 m in length and 14 m apart. The teams stand in line opposite each other. Each teamdefends a goal‐line. The disc is thrown back and forth between the teams. The object is to throwthe disc through the line of defending players. The throwing team scores a point when the otherteam does not catch a correctly thrown disc. The receiving team scores a point when the disc isnot thrown correctly. When a correctly thrown disc is caught by the other team, no points arescored. The team that first reaches 21 points wins the game.

About WFDF:

The World Flying Disc Federation ("WFDF") serves as the international governing body of all flyingdisc (frisbee) sports. WFDF is made up of the National Associations ("Members") that governtheir respective disc sports in over 65 countries. WFDF is the International Federation recognizedby the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Flying Disc sports, a member of the Associationof Recognised International Federations (ARISF), a member of SportAccord and the InternationalWorld Games Association, is recognized as a not‐for‐profit 501(c)(3) registered corporation in theState of Colorado, USA, and it is a signatory of the World Anti‐Doping Agency code. WFDFestimates that over 7.5 million people globally play disc sports competitively.

For more information, please contact:

Volker Bernardi, Executive Director

World Flying Disc Federation

Engasse 2a, D‐55296 HarxheimGERMANY

+49‐176‐6419‐7702 • ed@wfdf.org • www.wfdf.org

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