The 31st European Champions Cup will be held from Oct. 20-26, 2008 at Achim Grabowski's Treff Bowling in Duisburg, Germany (pictured above).

Real action starts on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd with 24 games preliminaries on different lane condition. The men's and women's finals are scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 25 at 1 and 2.15 p.m., respectively.

41 countries have announced to participate. Ingunn Øien, Norway and Marco Reviglio, Italy, are the defending champions. Øien has withdrawn from the ECC due to illness.

The ECC features the national champions or ranking leaders - one man and one woman per country - of the European Tenpin Bowling Federation member federations plus the defending champions.

Among the women's favorites are Vienna Open champion and Lahti Open finalist Patricia Luoto (pictured left), Germany; Multiple World Champion Zara Glover, England; World Ranking champion Britt Brøndsted, Denmark; World Games champion Isabelle Sacco, France; multiple World and European Team Cup champion Krista Pöllänen, Finland; as well as Ivonne Gross, Austria; Diana Zavjalova (pictured right), Latvia and Sue Abela, Malta.

Among the men's favorites is Treff Bowling proprietor and long-time German national team member and multiple German champion, Achim Grabowski (pictured right); 2-time World Youth champion and current runner-up in the EBT rankings, Dominic Barrett (pictured left), England; World Games champion Francois Sacco, France; World Tenpin Masters champ Guy Caminsky, South Africa; 2006 ECC champion Or Aviram, Israel; European Champion Thomas Gross, Austria; multiple Belgian champion Jean-Marc Lebon; as well as Svein Roger Olsen, Norway; Mathias Årup, Sweden; and Sami Konsteri, Finland.

All players will bowl three 8-game blocks (a total of 24 games) preliminaries over three days: Block 1 on short oil, Block 2 on long oil and Block 3 on short/long oil (left lane short, right lane long).

The top 8 players after the preliminaries will qualify for the single-elimination final in best-of-three games format. In each round the highest seeded player will bowl the lowest seeded player 2nd highest vs. the 2nd lowest, etc.) based on the preliminaries.

Bowlingdigital will cover the event live from Treff Bowling in Duisburg commencing Wednesday Oct. 22.

Photos Beat Brauwiler, right.