Italian fencers dominate Day Three of Fifth European Cadet Championship 2011 – Fencing Update
The third day of the Fifth European Cadet Championship (ECC) 2011 took place March 2 in Klagenfurt, Austria. The day comprised of the first two team events namely Men’s epee and Women’s foil.
Three nations showed up highlighted in the advanced rounds of the fencing events carried out namely Italy, Hungary and France. Both the events were overtaken by Italy’s Men and Women fencers, dominating in the final round of both the events carried out that
day.
In Men’s epee team event, there were about 80 participants from 20 various nations that were grouped in a team of four, representing their country. Three of these fencers are the active players while one of them can be exchanged with any one of the playing
fencers for a particular bout.
Italian male epeeists took up the top position that was Italy’s second gold medal of the event. The winning team included the individual event’s second and third and fifth position-takers namely Lorenzo Buzzi, Tomaso Melocchi and Mattia Pristera. The final
bouts were against Hungarian fencers Sandor Cho-Teun, Balazs Hamar, Daniel Berta and Cirill Safar as the substitute.
The bronze medal bout was between France and Spain where the Spanish Men took the first medal of the event for their country.
The final was a head-to-head combat with every second turning the tables. The rest of the team players had their fingers crossed on the nail-biting conclusive seconds of the last bout when the clock stopped at a tie-up 44-44. An extra time of one minute
was awarded for the decider hit of the final where the expert Lorenzo Buzzi of Italy took up the win-hit with just nine seconds left on the clock.
Italian Men fencers won gold followed by a beat-up to the Hungarian epeeists clinching silver with a heavy heart of losing the gold medal with just a slight difference.
On the other end, the Italian counter-parts also took hold of the gold medal in the Women’s foil team event played the same day.
A total of 12 nations participated in this event with a total of 48 fencers divided in a four-member team, representing their respective country.
Italy’s Women fencers got hold of the third gold medal for their country in the final played against Poland. Whereas the play-off for bronze was taken-up between France and Hungary.
Unlike their French male counter-parts, the female fencers managed to win the bronze medal for their country after defeating Hungary 40-34.
The final bouts of this event were not as nerve-wrecking as compared to the Men’s epee event, as Italy smoothly reached up to the top seed on defeating Poland 45-31.
The winning team comprised of the individual event’s silver and bronze winner, Francesca Palumbo and Martina Sinigalia respectively that were accompanied by the two other team members Camilla Mancini (10th position) and Erica Cipressa (17th
position).
For Poland, this was their first silver after the bronze won by Natalia Golebiowska in the Women’s foil individual event. The Polish Women were happy to have proven better than their male counterparts yet disappointed of losing the gold after reaching so
close.
The next events of the Fifth European Cadet Championship is to commenced March 3 in which two individual events shall be conducted for the day namely Men’s foil individuals and Women’s sabre individuals.
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