IWAS Wheelchair Fencing World Cup in Montreal – Fencing Recap
The 2011 IWAS Wheelchair Fencing World Cup opened at the Complexe Sportif Claude-Robillard, in Montreal, Canada, on April 29, 2011.
The event will last for three days and includes all three categories A, B and C, with respect to the level of the disability of the athletes. This World Cup is being run by the title sponsor, International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS),
in collaboration with the Defi Sportif in Altergo, Montreal.
The first day of the Wheelchair World Cup this season inaugurated with a bang,
comprising of the women’s individual epee and men’s individual foil competition. The ‘Star of the Day’ was Simone Briese Baetke from FC Tauberbischofsheim, Germany, who demonstrated world class fencing at the event. The brilliant fencer remained undefeated
until the quarter-finals of the epee individuals. Here, she faced-off with US finalist, Andrea De Mello and smashed the opponent 15:0.
Simone qualified into the semi-finals, where she met her Hungarian opponent, Gyongy Dani. The Hungarian fencer was easily trounced by a 15:6 defeat and Simone surged into the final round.
The Montreal epee individual World Cup final was held between Yui Chong Chan from Hong Kong and the German finalist. Both the gold-medal contenders locked horns in a cut-throat battle. Simone ended victorious with a slight escape at the 15:13 score points
difference, defeating Chan who got the silver-medal.
Head Coach of the German National Women Fencing team in Montreal, Swen Strittmatter, said, "This is the first major step towards London 2012 for Simone."
The second event of the day was the Men’s foil individual competition, which involved only a single German participant, Uwe Bartmann. The German entered the quarter-final rounds of the event after beating the number five seeded Frenchman, Maxime Valet, during
the knock-out round by 8:3, until the time-out was called.
Bartmann later fought against another Frenchman for a semi-final berth but missed by a single point at 14:15, ending up eighth in the event.
Strittmatter said, “With this launch, we can be very happy and it's been fun for the next tournament, starting here with Steffen Nordmann also the last German participants in the tournament."
This Wheelchair World Cup managed to group-in disabled athletes from 15 various nations around the world. In this event, the athletes fought for earning international points in order to be among the fencers in the World Ranking list, allowing them to qualify
into the 2012 Paralympic Games, next year.
Moreover, a total of six American fencers participated in this weekend’s Canadian World Cup among which De Mello but got beaten in the quarter-finals by Germany’s Simone.
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