Austria’s 2011 European Cadet Fencing Championship: Fencing News
The final day of the 2011 European Cadet Championship took place on March 5 in Klagenfurt, Austria. The day comprised of two team events namely Men’s foil and Women’s sabre.
In Men's foil total 16 nations had participated with each team comprising of four giving a total of 64 male fencing participants. Among them, the successive highlights of past events include France, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Italy of-course.
The fencing teams that made it up to the top 4 of men’s foil team event were Russia, Italy, France and Hungary.
In the quarter final bouts, Germany and Russia had a head-to-head fight for reaching the top-4 where Russia managed the victory by its grand winning hit at 45-44, leading itself to the semi-final bouts. Whereas the rest here teams to qualify into the semi-finals
were Italy, France and Hungary.
For becoming one of the top-2 teams, a cut-throat competition took place between Italy and Hungary where the bouts ended with a tie-up at 25 points each. An extra minute time was awarded for the decider point to take place where Italy struck the winning
hit and advanced for a gold-snatching performance in the final round.
On the other side, France had a very close fight with Russia, but a 5-point difference resulted loss for France at the final score of 40-45 hit points.
The final round took place between Russia and Italy where Russian men brightened their day on defeating Italy by a 45-42 score difference and Italian men lost their last chance for gold medal.
The Russian team comprised of the silver-medal holder in Men’s foil Individuals Ilya Degtyarev, 17th ranked Alexander Pivovarov, 28th ranked Anton Sekov and 39th ranked Alexey Valerov.
Among them, Ilya did not performed better than the 17th ranked Alexander Pivovarov followed by another skilled fencer Alexey.
Italian team featured the bronze-holder Michele Del Macchia, 8th ranked Damiano Rosatelli, and 19th and 20th ranked Alessandro Bertolazzi and Francesco Marotta,
Here the best performance was given by the deserving 3rd ranked followed by the 20th ranked Francesco but still they could not overpower the Russians in the final, hence losing the competition.
On contrary, the bronze-medal was secured by France taking third position against the Hungarian male foilists with an obvious lead in score points.
In Women's sabre 10 nations participated with each team comprising of four members making a count of 40 female fencers taking part in the team completion.
Among these, an automatic bye was given to the teams Hungary, Poland, Italy, Russia, France and Germany for the top 8. However, two qualifying bouts were taken place between Turkey and Great Britain and Austria with Ukraine. The two female sabreur teams
making it to the next rounds were Great Britain and Ukraine.
Among these, Hungary, Russia, Germany and Italy very single-handedly made it to the semi-final round.
The final-qualifying bout between Russia and Hungary was a vicious one, where the score went head to head till the last minute where Hungary took the winning hit at 45-44, leading into the gold-winning round.
On the other hand, Italian women defeated Germany by 10 points difference, thus leading into the final bout against Hungary.
With a clear four-point lead at 45-41, Italy trounced Hungary in the final bouts of the conclusive event, hence grabbing gold for their country, unlike their male counterparts.
In this combat, Italy's women sabre individual’s topper, Martina Criscio, was found outstanding in the team event.
The event concluded with the medal tally conquered by the Italian fencers with highest number of gold medals at seven, four silver and bronze medals each. The second highest in medal's tally was Russia winning two gold, silver and bronze medals each.
The event concluded with Italian male and female fencers cheering for their accomplishments in the 2011 European Cadet Championship. Whereas, it was quite discouraging that the host fencers from Austria did not even win a single medal in the entire event.
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