Fifth European Cadet Championship 2011 – Day One – Fencing Update
Klagenfurt, Austria saw the first day of the Fifth European Cadet Championship (ECC) held on February 28 with the Women’s foil and Men’s epee events taking place.
The Italy’s Men and Women fencers dominated in the early rounds of the events during the day.
There were 16 pools comprising of 106 participants from 31 countries in the Men’s epee individual category. The first ten consisted of seven individual fencers as the next six were made up of six individuals.
Hungary, Russia and Italy dominated the other countries during the tournament.
Among the top three positions, Italy took up two positions, second by Lorenzo Buzzi and third shared by Mattia Pristera with a Hungarian named Balazs Hamar. Moreover, the fifth position was also held by an Italian fencer Tomaso Melocchi. However, the top
position was taken by Israel’s consistent fencer, Yuval-Shalom Freilich who kept the record of 11 wins out of 12.
The final was a tough fight when Freilich got advantage of the one-score lead, concluding the competition at 14-13 against Lorenzo Buzzi.
One of the semi-final bouts commenced between both the Italian fencers Mattia Pristera and Lorenzo Buzzi to combat for qualifying into the finals. Lorenzo tactfully overpowered his Italian compatriot and went into the finals leaving Mattia defeated at a
huge 5-15 score gap.
In Women’s foil event, 22 nations participated comprising of 65 individual fencers that had been distributed in ten pools. The first half pools contained seven fencers whereas the rest half had six fencers each.
This event was also captured by the Italian fencers grabbing the second, third and tenth position. The second seed was taken up by Francesca Palumbo and third position was shared by Martina Sinigalia with a Polish foilist Natalia Golebiowska.
There were a few Polish fencers who caught sight for their brilliant performance until the quarter-final rounds. Apart from, Natalia at third, Martyna Dlugosz and Aleksandra Lasic secured seventh and eighth position for their country.
The final bout of this event was also a head-to-head on 14-14 score when Szalai managed to take up the winning hit prior to the Italian fencer, hence winning the top position at 15-14 score line. Szalai was also the most consistent player since the preliminary
rounds keeping a record of all 11 attempts into victory.
Fencers from France also dominated a bit of the early rounds of the Women’s foil event, hardly making it up to the top 16 and top 8. Maud Rouas got defeated in the top 8 qualifiers whereas Pauline Ranvier lost the quarter-final bout to qualify for the semi-finals
and stood at the fifth position.
The second day of the Championship is to be held March 1 and it will feature two events that are the Men’s sabre individuals and Women’s epee individuals.
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