The Challenge Monal: A historic Men’s Epee World Cup of Fencing
The International Men’s Epee World Cup of Fencing named “The Challenge Monal” is the historic event that brought many controversies in the World Rankings for qualification in the London Olympics.
The Men’s Epee World Cup held in Paris called Challenge Monal concluded on March 20 at the venue Stade Pierre de Coubertin Stadium. The event covered the individual and team World Cup rated under Category A by the International Fencing body FIE.
In the Men’s individual competition, after two failures by Andras Redli and Daniel Budai Hungary was left with only three chances to reach up to the top 32 on the first day on March 18. However, the Hungarian fencers availed the opportunity to the utmost
where the possible three seeds were taken up by Imre Geza and Peter Szenyi and Gabor Boczko making it to the next level.
In the Top 8, Hungary shared dominance along with the host fencers of France, holding two seeds each whereas Italy, Russia, Germany and Venezuela got hold of one seed each in the quarter-finals.
Sadly, in the quarter-final rounds, both Hungarians Imre and Boczko were beaten by France’s Gauthier Grumier 15-10 and Venezuela’s Ruben Limardo 15-11 respectively. Moreover, a head-to-head fight was held between the Italian Matteo Tagliariol and the Frenchman
Yannick Borel with a 14-each tie when Tagliariol took up the winning hit and headed into the semi-final rounds.
On the contrary, a single-handed win was taken up by the Germany’s Joerg Fiedler against Russian Pavel Sukhov with a 15-4 score point’s difference.
The semi-final bouts were held among the two pairs Grumier vs. Fiedler and Tagliariol vs. Limardo. Both bouts resulted in obvious wins where Fiedler defeated Grumier by 15-7 points and Tagliariol had beaten Limardo by a 15-8 score difference, both heading
into the final round.
The Italian epeeist hardly but noticeably trounced the German fencer Fiedler at a score lead of 15-10 points. Hence, gold was clinched by Tagliariol followed by Fiedler at silver and a bronze medal-share between Limardo and Grumier.
The team event took place on March 20, in which a total of 26 nations participated with their Men’s teams for the Epee World Cup. The countries that made it to the top four were Korea on defeating Hungary at 45-38, Russia after a threatening fight with China
at 43-42, Norway on trouncing the US team 44- 34 and last but not least Italy after a head-to-head fight against the host team at 44-43 scores.
The semi-final bout comprised of the two extremes, a single-handed win with a close fight for the medal-winning round. Korea took over the Russian team with ease after conquering the scores at 42-37. On the other side, Italy had to face-off against the French
team with a little but leading score win at 45-41 points, making it up to the final against Korea.
It was surprising to see the Korean team overshadowing the World famous Italian fencers by defeating them with a score win of 45-38, grabbing the gold medal whereas Italy was left with silver in hand.
The third position-winning match was played between Russia and Norway where Russia took up the bronze on thrashing Norway by a 45-37 score win.
The World Cup concluded with Italy holding one gold and one silver medal, proving to be the stand-outs of the Paris event. A great competition of the fencing was conduct by the FIE.
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