Sabre fencers slash through the competition on day 3

All 4 Men’s Sabre Fencers Advance; 2 in Women’s Epee to Compete on Monday in the 2009 Fencing World Championships

Lindsay Campbell in action in today’s elimination match. Photo (c) Serge Timacheff/FencingPhotos.com

The men’s sabre team rode a strong performance in the preliminary pools to advance to Monday’ finals. The women’s epee squad faced more challanges as two fell in the early qualifying rounds.

{sidebar id=1} Tim Morehouse and Ben Igoe each received byes into the DE table of 64 based on their high world rankings. Daryl Homer and James Williams earned enough victories in their preliminary pool bouts to qualify directly to the top-64 to be fenced on Monday.

The women’s epee squad faced a more substantial challenge. Lacking the high rankings of the sabre squad, all four women’s epeeists had to fence in the preliminary pools. Two of them won their way to Monday’s elimination table.

Lindsay Campbell and Kelley Hurley each finished pools 4-2. Courtney Hurley came in with a 3-3 mark and Susannah Scanlan manged only a 1-5 record in the pools round. Kelley Hurley, a 2008 Olympian, lost her direct elimation match to Korea’s OH Yun Hee 15-13. She finished the tournament with a a final placement of 66th and Susannah Scanlan 107th.

World #3 Anna Sivkova (RUS) did not compete in the championships. Morehouse, Williams, and Kelley Hurley were all members of the 2008 Olympic team.

Lindsay Campbell defeated Oxana Svatkovskaya 15-6 and Courtney Hurley bested Great Britain’s Elisa Albini 15-10 to advance into Monday’s elimination table of 64.

The format for the 2009 World Championships is slightly different than years past. Here’s the breakdown:

• Top 16 fencers in the FIE world rankings automatically qualify for the DE of 64.
• The top 16 fencers out of pools qualify directly to the final day’s DE of 64
• The bottom 20% of fencers out of pools are eliminated
• The remaining fencers compete in a preliminary DE table until 32 remain to fill out the DE table of 64
• The final day of competition is run as a single elimination DE table.

UniversalSports.com will broadcast Monday’s finals live — the last day of the individual events — beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET.

The competition continues on Saturday with the finals of women’s sabre and men’s foil. Discussion continues in the forums.

{mospagebreak title=Men’s Sabre DE Table}

2009 Fencing World Championships: Men’s Sabre Top 64

{mospagebreak title=Women’s Epee DE Table}

2009 Fencing World Championships – Women’s Epee Top 64