This post comes from Andrew Fischl who was on hand taking video of the finals and who publishes compilation videos under the name CyrusofChaos.
Men’s Recap and Analysis:
The last day of a world cup is the day of the team event and unfortunately today was a very disappointing day for the American team. The men’s team (Tim Morehouse, Daryl Homer, James Williams, Ben Igoe) lost a heartbreaking bout to the Ukrainian team (45-43) in which we were up 34-40.
Then in the next round with the British team James Williams sprained his ankle in his bout with Alex O’Connell. We then proceeded to lose that bout as well (45-37). Unfortunately, with a very important tournament only a week away, James will need to undergo intensive rehab in order to be able to fence.
For those of you who do not know, every zone has a Grand-Prix-strength tournament for only the people in that zone. Our zone only consists of the countries in North and South America. Compared to the other zones, our tournament has the lowest number of top fencers in the world so this is a great chance for our fencers to get a lot of points.
The US Men’s team eventually beat Poland (45-44) and Spain (45-43) in a pair of very close bouts to finish the day in 13th place.
The Romanian team had a great day, beating Poland (45-29) and Korea (45-31) very badly, Italy, #1 team in the world right now (45-39), and finally Russia (45-40) to win the tournament. All in all it was a very impressive showing for the Romanians.
Women’s Sabre
Our women’s team was less eventful and more successful than the men’s event was. The team (Mariel Zagunis, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Dagmara Wozniak, Daria Schneider) beat Singapore 45-11 and Spain 45-26 before losing badly to Russia 45-33. We then beat Ukraine for the bronze in a very close bout, 45-42.
Sophia Velikaya led the Russian team to a Gold medal by beating China 45-37 in the final. The Russian team is now almost 100 points ahead of the second place team in the world standings. This was a great weekend for the Russians with 2 individual gold medals, a team gold medal, and a team silver medal.
In addition to that Yakimenko has now won the past three world cups in a row and Velikaya is now ranked number two in the world. The Russians will go into the European Championships (their zonals) and World Championships with a lot of confidence.