Olympic Champion, Mariel Zagunis earns silver medal at 2011 Catania World Fencing Championships
The two-time Olympic Champion, Mariel Zagunis of United States captured the silver medal in the Women’s Sabre Individual contest on the fourth day of the 2011 Catania World Fencing Championships.
The Olympic Champion lost her bout to the Russian, Sophia Velikaia in the playoff bout. Zagunis had already won the gold medals in the Women’s Sabre Individual contests of the World Championships in 2009 and 2010. But this year, she clutched the silver medal
of the World Championships and named herself in the fencers having three consecutive medal victories in the annual Championships.
Zagunis said on her medal victory, “I feel like I fenced really well today until the final seconds of the final bout. I should’ve clinched the final when I was up 13-8, but, unfortunately, I lost a little focus.”
Mariel started her opening bout with the table of 64 as she was given an automatic bye due to high ranking points. She faced Romanian, Elena Muneanu and dropped her with the score of 15-11. Defeating Brazilian, Karina Lakerbai and Japanese Seira Nakayama
in the next bouts and qualified for the quarter-final bout defeating both of them. The 15-8 victory against the Italian Irene Vecchi in the quarter-final bout took the Olympic Champion towards the semi-final round. The Russian Julia Gavrilova was dropped in
the semi-final and Zagunis was in the playoff against Sophia.
Ed Korfanty, the head coach of the U.S. Women’s national team was very impressed by the tremendous performance of Zagunis and said, “She’s won this event twice and the Olympics before that and it’s very hard to repeat four, five times in a row. Now she needs
to rest and take care of herself and next year we will be ready for London.”
The crowd witnessed the amazing playoff bout between Zagunis and Sophia as the score tied at 13-13 touches at the end of third bout. The decider hit by Sophia secured the final victory for the Russian squad. It was overall the nice competition on the fourth
day of the Catania Championships.
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