Kimmo Lehtonen, Joonas Jehkinen and Osku Palermaa (pictured above, l-r) of Finland defeated Sweden's Daniel Fransson, Magnus Johnson Jr. and Jesper Svensson, 636-555, in the championship match of the Trios event to win the first gold medal for Finland at the 2015 Men's European Championships in Aalborg.

The Finns led the 60 trios after six games preliminaries with 3889 pinfall total, an average of 216.06, to earn the No. 1 seed for the playoffs. Two-hander Palermaa led the way with 1364 and lefties Lehtonen and Jehkinen added 1264 and 1261.

The Finns met Andreas Gripp, Marco Baade and Tobias Börding (left, l-.r) of Germany in the semifinals, who finished the preliminaries with a big 681 game to help grab the No. 4 seed with 3768 (209.33).

Baade (234), Gripp (233) and Börding (227) improved by 13 pins in a high-scoring semifinal match, yet fell to Palermaa (246), Lehtonen (238) and Jehkinen (214) by four pins, 698-694.

The semifinal match between Sweden and Israel's Omer Nechushtan, Aviv Alfital and Or Aviram (right, l-r) was similar closer as Johnson (234), Fransson (223) and two-handed European Bowling Tour point ranking leader Svensson (185) prevailed by five pins against Nechushtan (242), Alfital (201) and Aviram (194), 642-637.

The gold medal match was in sharp contrast to the nail-biting semifinal contest. Lehtonen (244) led the experienced Finnish trio with a big 244 game while Jehkinen and Palermaa contributed 2014 and 188, respectively, to cruise to the title their young opponents from Sweden had games between 192 and 171.

Sweden (L-R Fransson, Johnson and Svensson) earned silver while Germany and Israel shared the bronze medal.

With 18 of 24 games of preliminaries completed, Doubles gold medalist Frederik Øhrgaard (right) of Denmark widened his lead in All-Events (combined scores in Singles, Doubles, Trios and Team preliminaries) to 77 pins with 3996 total and an overall average of 222.00.

Börding remained in second place with 3919 (217.72). Singles champion Thomas Larsen (left) of Denmark leaped from 15th to third place with 3900 (216.67) and is followed by Lehtonen and Palermaa in fourth and fifth place with 3871 and 3870, respectively.

Actions shifts to the five-player Team event on Thursday and Friday, June 11 & 12, which also will decided the medals in All-Events and the 24 players who will advance to the Masters finals.

The 185-player field will be split into two squads who roll the first three games of preliminaries Thursday starting at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST). The highest positioned teams from will be seeded in Squad B starting at 1.30 p.m. on Friday, while the rest of the teams and all players from the countries who haven't sent a full team will be seeded in Squad A slated for 8 a.m. The top 4 teams will advance to the playoffs starting Friday at 7 p.m.