Men’s Foil Grand Prix 2011 – Valerio Aspromonte takes victory in Venice – Fencing Update
The Men’s foil Grand Prix 2011 title was won by Italy’s Valerio Aspromonte on March 6, 2011 in the Italian city of Venice. The Grand Prix featured the Senior Men’s foil with just individual events that were held on March 5-6.
The final was won against the Chinese fencer Jianfei Ma where the last-hit turned into an exciting victory for the Italian native.
The triumph was celebrated by Aspromonte by jumping into the arms of his coach, Stefano Cerioni. He said, “I dedicate the victory to my teacher, Salvatore Di Naro. For me it's a success that gives me even more in view of stimuli to the opening of Olympic
qualification."
Aspromonte lead his way into the finals after defeating fencers from USA, Russia, France, China and his own fencing compatriots from Italy.
In the advanced levels of the event, it was found that half of the top 8 seeds were held by the Italian Men namely George Avola, Andrea Cassara and Luca Simoncelli along with Valerio. Venetian Lari Tomasso, got knocked out in the top 16 round by China’s
Ma with a score of 15-10.
In the quarter-finals, Simoncelli brilliantly trounced the World’s Number one ranked Lei Sheng by an interesting yet close win with a 15-13 score. Avola defeated the British foilist Richard Kruse 15-12. Aspromonte came up among the top 8 as he defeated France’s
Marcel Marcilloux with a 15-11 win. Cassara also made it to the top 8 by singlehandedly winning over the Korean fencer Byung Chul Choi by a huge 15-7 score difference.
The male fencers making it up to the quarter-finals of the Grand Prix included the dominating host Italians, French, Chinese, Russian and German senior foilists.
The fights became all the more intriguing and fearsome in the semi-final qualifier rounds where three out of four matches were very close ones at 15-13 between Avola and Simoncelli, 15-11 between Aspromonte and France’s Victor Sintes and 15-12 played between
Cassara facing Ma.
The two semi-final bouts were played by Simoncelli vs. Aspromonte and Ma vs. Russia’s Alexey Cheremisinov. Aspromonte put in a tremendous effort to get a victory at 15-12 and proceeded into the final round. On the contrary, an intense battle took place between
the Chinese and Russian Men’s participants to qualify for the final round. However, Ma took up the final assault to beat Cheremisinov 15-14.
The final round was equally intense for Ma to confront Aspromonte where again a tie at 14 each had taken place. However, the Chinese was not lucky enough to take the winning hit and Valerio did the honours in concluding the match with a victory-strike to
take the score 15-14, giving the Italian his gold medal win.
The top, third, fifth and sixth rank was taken up by the host fencers whereas China’s Ma got a silver medal followed by Russia’s Cheremisinov sharing the bronze-winning seed with the Italian Simoncelli.
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