Women’s Epee World Cup concludes in Leipzig – Fencing Update
The Women’s Epee World Cup was held from March 25 to 27 in Leipzig, Germany. The event comprised of both Senior epee individual and team competition that were conducted at a football school named "Egidius Braun" that belongs to the Saxon Football Association.
The World Cup commenced under the German Fencing Association (GFA) in collaboration with Leipzig’s fencing club, with approval from the International Fencing Federation (FIE).
A total of 196 fencers participated in the individual competition from 37 nations worldwide. There were 16 fencers to carry an automatic bye to the top-64 direct elimination round. Though, the remaining female epeeists had been divided into 26 pools, each
comprising of seven female epeeists with exception to pool 4 and 13 carrying only six players.
The sixteen players that entered directly into the top-64 were Ana Branza and Anca Maroiu from Romania, Imke Duplitzer and Britta Heidemann from Germany, Tatiana Logounova from Russia, Laura Flessel-Colovic, Hajnalka Kiraly and Maureen Nisima from France,
Xiaojuan Luo, Mingfang Yin and Yujie Sun from China, Bianca Del Carretto and Nathalie Moellhausen from Italy, Yun Hee Oh from Korea, Sonja Tol from the Netherlands and Magdalena Piekarska from Poland.
The first day featured pool rounds followed by the preliminary direct elimination 64 rounds for the individual event. After the direct elimination Tableau 128, Russia was found dominating the other nations with eight out of 64 seeds followed by six seeds
each captured by the Italian and the host fencers by the end of the day.
During the second day, it was unfortunate to see that all German fencers, except one Duplitzer, got dropped in the preliminary rounds and failed to reach up to the top-16. The Russian females however maintained their dominance in the successive rounds with
three out of 16 seeds still occupied. Italy, Romania, Estonia and Switzerland took up two seeds each in the top-16.
In the quarter-final rounds, Russian and Romanian females held two out of eight seeds whereas Italy, China, Estonia and Switzerland managed one seed each into the top-8.
A fierce battle was to be played among the two Romanian natives, Maroiu and Simona Alexandru levelling up to a score at 14 points each. However, Maroiu turned up with the decider point at 15-14 and qualified for the semi-final round.
The other three qualifiers of the top-4 round of Women’s epee individuals were Sun from China, Anna Sivkova from Russia and Tiffany Geroudet from Switzerland.
Russia’s Sivkova and China’s Sun had a cut-throat competition to make it to the final round with 11 points each, but soon the Russian took up the decider point and qualified to the next level.
On the other side, Geroudet defeated Maroiu with a very close fight at 15-13 and qualified for the final bouts.
During the final round, Geroudet was found dominating in the beginning three-minute bout. However, Sivkova soon covered up the gap in the next two bouts and came up with a tie on eight points each, with no time left on the clock. Immediately, the sudden
death bout was introduced as a one-minute extra time during which Sivkova struck her gold-clinching hit over Geroudet and concluded the event with a 9-8 win.
The third day featured Women’s epee team competition in which 24 nations had participated with their four-member teams.
Eight of these nations carried an automatic bye to the top-16 round. These nations were Russia, Korea, China, Poland, Italy, France, Romania and Germany.
Both Italy and France were found victorious throughout the preceding bouts and recorded single-handed wins over their opponents. However, the French team was defeated and did not make it to the semi-final bouts.
The two semi-final bouts featured Italy vs. Romania and Germany vs. Estonia. Italy easily took the win over the Romanian Women 41-37 and took a leap into the final round. On contrary, a ferocious sword-fight was found to be played between the host and the
Estonian team. At one point, the host was found leading 27-21 score points that the later withered away and a tie-up took place at 39 points each with the time-up call. However, Estonia was lucky enough to take the winning point during the extra one minute
and qualified for the finale.
As expected, the final round was cut-throat between the two finalists and the scores went head-to-head until the last bout. Italy managed to lead with six points and won the gold medal of the Women’s epee team competition with a 40-34 score difference.
The third-position bout was a single-handed win for Romania over the German team as they grabbed the bronze medal of the event.
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