2011 Men's Epee World Cup in Heidenheim - Fencing News
The 2011 Men’s Epee World Cup concluded on May 1, at the Congress Centre, Heidenheim, Germany. The event started on April 28. Both the individual and team competitions were held in the Men’s Epee discipline in Germany.
The Men’s Epee individuals was held between April 29-30 and the team competitions were held between April 30 – May 1. All the fencing equipment and material check took place on April 28, one day prior to the World Cup.
A referee meeting took place before the beginning of the preliminary rounds of the individual competition, in which 38 countries participated.
The competition lasted for two days, consisting of 253 fencers who got divided into 36 pools. Each pool contained about 6-7 individual fencers from various nations. Out of the 253 total, 16 fencers carried an automatic bye into the top-64 tableau.
In this event, Italy surprisingly sealed all the three podium places of the competition. However, the bronze-medal was shared with a French epeeist, Ronan Gustin.
Apart from Italy, France outshone during the competition until the semi-final round, but went unlucky when Gustin was trounced by the Italian counterpart Stefano Carozzo, who later took the top seed of the competition.
Previously, the quarter-final round featured fencers from three other nations namely Gabor Boczko from Hungary playing Matteo Tagliariol from Italy, Anton Avdeev from Russia playing Stefano Carozzo from Italy and Joerg Fiedler from Germany playing Paolo
Pizzo from Italy. All the three were defeated from their Italian opponents in this round with the respective scores; 15-5, 15-10 and 15-9.
Later, the three Italians and the French Gustin were found playing in the semi-final round out of which Carozzo and Pizzo made it to the final round after defeating Gustin by 15-12 and Tagliariol by a close 15-13 score difference, respectively.
In the final round, the two Italians had a tough fight, but at the end Carozzo took the top podium place after beating down Pizzo by 15-11.
Following the final round, a presentation ceremony was held after which the fencers and the officials had a banquet set for the night on April 30.
The Men’s Epee team event is renowned as the Voith-Cup in Germany whose 30th edition was held at the same venue from April 30.
A total of 27 countries participated with their teams in this event out of which Hungary, Canada, USA, France, and Korea received an automatic bye to the top-16 tableau.
The teams to make it to the quarter-final round included Hungary, Germany, Korea, USA, Canada, Russia, Italy and France.
The host team got defeated from Hungary by 45-32 whereas Canada got defeated from Korea by a similar 45-31 score difference.
On contrary, the rest of the two quarter-final bouts were head-to-head where USA surprisingly defeated Russia at 45-43 whereas Italy defeated France at 39-37.
In the semi-finals, USA again outshone on a tie-up against one of the top ranked teams, Italy at a nerve-wracking 43-43. However, the American team qualified for the gold-winning round after taking the winning-point in the sudden death round at 44-43. Moreover,
Hungary also made it to the finals after beating down Korea at 45-42 score.
The final bout was no less than a cut-throat battle between the two finalists when the Americans tied up the score again at 40-40 until a time-out was called. However, Hungary’s Boczko struck the golden hit in the 47th second of the one-minute
sudden death round and clinched gold for his team, leaving the US with a silver medal.
The third position match was played between Korea and Italy in which the Italians defeated their opponents easily at a 45-32 score difference.
At the end of the competition, a prize distribution ceremony was held which followed a dinner for all the participant teams and event officials on May 1.
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