Italian Valentina Vezzali capture gold medal at St. Petersburg Women Foil Grand Prix : Fencing News
The Italian Lady of Foil, Valentina Vezzali, demonstrated her performance by winning the gold medal during Women’s Foil event in St. Petersburg Grand Prix competitions that took place on June 6 in Russia. Vezzali defeated another Blue, Arianna Errigo, in the play-off for gold medal victory.
Total 147 fencers from all national federations including Italy, Russia, United States, Germany and France participated in the Women’s Foil event of Grand Prix. The competition started on May 5, where pool matches, table of 132 matches were conducted. The next day remaining tables of direct elimination round were conducted. Vezzali was given an automatic bye in the pool matches and in the table of 132. She started from table of 64 as number one seeded fencer. Polish Katarzyna Kryczalo was her first opponent in the competition. Eliminating Kryczalo with an amazing ten-point lead in the score 15-5 touches, Vezzali advanced to the table of 32.
Another amazing 15-4 victory was taken by Vezzali in the table of 32 against Great Britain’s Carolin Golubytskyi. Chinese Jinyan Chen was her next target in the table of 16, who lost her bout with 15-3 touches. Vezzali led with amazing 12 points against Chen and qualified for quarter-final. Russian Eugyenia Lamonova was her next opponent in the quarterfinal round. In nine minutes bout, Lamonova could score only four touches while Vezzali secured her semi-final bout by scoring eleven touches in nine minutes.
In semi-final, Vezzali faced Hee Nam Hyun and defeated her with 14-12 touches to face her home county’s Arianna Errigo. Finally Vezzali was the blue lady who could stand undefeated in the competition. It has not happened the first time that Vezzali took the victory with two gold medals in 2010-11 seasons.
Vezzali had already taken two gold medals during Gdansk Grand Prix and Turin World Cup for Foil Women that took place on February 25 and March 11, respectively. Moreover, Vezzali is ranked second in the world ranking list. The ST Grand Prix victory may take her in the number one fencer list in world ranking.
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