Team USA's Bond, Martin earn Women's Doubles bronze at 2025 IBF World Championships
Jillian Martin of Stow, Ohio (left), and Julia Bond of Lincoln, Nebraska, captured Women's Doubles bronze at the 2025 IBF World Championships in Hong Kong on Sunday.
HONG KONG – Team USA bowlersJulia Bond of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Jillian Martin of Stow, Ohio, reached the podium on Sunday by teaming up to win a bronze medal in Women’s Doubles at the 2025 International Bowling Federation World Championships, which is being contested at Top Bowl, Kai Tak Sports Park in Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
The Americans started their run to the medal stand by rolling games of 225, 187, 217, 205 and 201 during five games of round-robin Baker match play on Sunday morning.
Those scores allowed Bond and Martin to conclude the Round of 24 with a 207 average and a perfect 5-0 record, which was good enough for first place in Group C and a berth in the Women’s Doubles semifinals.
There, the Team USA duo would face Singapore’s talented sisters Cherie and Daphne Tan, who earned their spot in the final four by winning Group D with a record of 4-1 on the strength of games of 201, 187, 280, 219 and 177 (a 212.8 average).
As expected, the best-of-three semifinal match was a competitive one that took all three games to determine a winner.
The Americans struck first as Bond and Martin captured the opening game, 188-158, to move just one win away from earning a shot at the Women’s Doubles gold medal.
That win would never come, however, as the sisters from Singapore rebounded to take Game 2 by a score of 220-188 before running away with Game 3, 256-160, to complete the comeback and end the Americans’ bid for the event victory.
The Tans would fall short in their quest for gold too, however, as, one match later, they were defeated 2-0 (181-177; 230-213) by Finland’s Essi Pakarinen and Peppi Konsteri, which gave the Finns the gold medal while sending the Tan sisters home with silver.
The event’s other bronze medal went to Singapore’s Shayna Ng and New Hui Fen, who fell 2-0 (230-203; 206-201) to Pakarinen and Konsteri during the second women’s semifinal.
Singapore wasn’t the only country to have multiple squads competing on the final day of Women’s Doubles competition, however. Team USA had three.
Clemmer and Russo, meanwhile, managed scores of 202, 191, 172, 214 and 199 while going 1-4 and landing in sixth place in Group C.
Although Bond and Martin would have liked to have won gold and had their teammates standing on the podium alongside them, they were both very pleased with Sunday’s performance.
“Winning a bronze medal in doubles with Jillian (Martin) is very special to me,” Bond said. “This is the first time we’ve competed with each other on this type of stage. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever have this opportunity together, so I’m really grateful for her trust and support in me. I had a lot of fun, and I hope this won’t be the last time we take on the world together like this.”
Martin enjoyed the pairing just as much.
“It was really fun competing with Julia (Bond) throughout doubles,” Martin said. “I feel like we are very open and have good communication, which worked to our advantage today. She always helps me stay grounded, and today we were able to feed off each other’s energy to stay positive, have fun and make good shots.”
Plenty of good shots were thrown on the men’s side on Sunday as well, but no duo threw more of them than Romania’s Mihai-Alin Dragnia and Mate Balazs-Becsi.
The Romanian pair earned the Men’s Doubles gold medal thanks to a 2-1 (235-247; 235-221; 231-166) semifinal victory over Malaysia’s Muhammad Syazirol Shamsudin and Rafiq Ismail and a 2-0 (238-233; 215-179) sweep of Germany’s Dennis Gruenheid and Paul Purps during the gold-medal match.
Gruenheid and Purps took home the silver medal while Ondrej Trojek and Lukas Jelinek of the Czech Republic joined Shamsudin and Ismail in earning bronze.
With doubles competition completed in both divisions, the final two events of the 2025 IBF World Championships will be trios and team.
The first two rounds of Men’s Trios will occur on Monday with Women’s Trios following on Tuesday.
The focus will shift from three bowlers to five on Wednesday, which is when the first two rounds of Men’s Team and Women’s Team competition will occur.
The excitement is sure to reach a fever pitch during the last two days of competition when the action moves from Top Bowl to Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wanchai.
The trios semifinals and finals in both divisions will take place at Queen Elizabeth Stadium on Thursday with the Men’s Team and Women’s Team semis and finals following on Friday, which will be the last day of competition at this year’s tournament.
After the last balls have been rolled and the final medals have been awarded, the Victory Banquet will officially bring the 2025 IBF World Championships to a close on Friday evening.
