BOX duo Sue Cooke and Alex Jacobs, Wiltshire ladies pairs champions for the past three years, have qualified for the semi-finals in the women’s national pairs championship.

They have both been enjoying a fine run at the National Championships being staged at Victoria Park, Royal Leamington Spa, this week and have reached the last four in the national pairs.

Cooke and Jacobs opened with a big 29-15 win the preliminary round of the pairs against Hertfordshire’s Nicola Combe and Dympna Whybrow (Bushey BC) on Wednesday afternoon.

The following day they recorded an equally impressive first round 22-14 victory over Diane Medhurst and Trish Jarvis (Wolvey, Hinkley, Warks) and followed that with a closely fought 20-18 success over junior international Kylie Hampton and her partner Vickie Pancott (Knaphill, Surrey).

Today (Friday) Cooke and Jacobs kept their winning sequence going but were taken to the wire in the third round as they beat Julie Kelly and England senior and junior international Sian Gordon (Burnham BC, Bucks), 19-18 after an extra end had to be played.

However, in this afternoon’s quarter-final they had no such worries winning by seven shots as they defeated Teresa Pearson and Gill Jones (Consett Park BC, Durham) 19-12 to book a place in Saturday’s semi-finals.

In tomorrow morning’s semi-finals (9.30am) they face Rosemary Corney and Brenda Plumpton (Alton Social BC, Hants). The other semi-final is between Lynne Bowen and Sue Davies (Broadway, Worcs) and Laura Kuschel and Marion Johnson (Sidcup, Kent).

The two semi-final winners meet in the pairs final in the afternoon starting at 2pm.

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