Paolo Pizzo wins 3rd Gold Medal for Italy

Paolo Pizzo (ITA) was the 3rd Italian fencer to earn a gold medal at this years World Championships with his defeat of Bas Verwijlen (NED) 15-13 before a packed house in Catania, Italy.

The Italian fencer started of the match behind 4-0 on Verwijlen, but fought back with 4 straight points of his own to tie the match at 4.  Pizzo would go ahead at 6-5 and end the first period up 8-5.  In the second period the two fencers fought touch for touch with Verwijlen baiting Pizzo’s attack and launching low counter-attacks which made the taller Dutch fencer look off balance even as he scored.

With the score tied at 13-13 to start the 3rd period, Verwijlen gambled on a fast attack on Pizzo just 18 seconds into the period.  Pizzo was ready, however, and caught Verwijlen on the counter-attack to go up 14-13.  Pizzo would then follow up with an attack of his own just 5 seconds later to claim the 15-13 victory.

US Top-16 Results

Two US fencers, Soren Thompson, and Seth Kelsey, earned top-16 results in the Men’s Epee event.  Thompson and Kelsey maintained their positions in the Adjusted Olympic Rankings.  Thompson currently sits in the top-12 automatic qualifiers for the Olympics and Kelsey holds the top Regional bid.

Soren Thompson entered the day as the 61st seed but won his opening match against #4 Gabor Boczko (HUN) 15-9.  He then defeated Bartosz Piasecki (NOR) 15-8 before falling to Pizzo 15-9 in the round of 16.

Kelsey missed out on a top-8 result when Nikolai Novosjolov (EST) fought back from a two touch deficit to tie their top-16 match at 7-7 with just a minute remaining.  At 20 seconds left a double-touch was scored bringing the score to 8-8 and then Novosjolov went up by 1 touch with just 4 seconds remaining.  Kelsey went for the equalizer but was unable to score and lost 10-8.  Earlier in the day Kelsey had defeated Yiu Chung Tsui (HKG), 13-7 and Dmitry Karuchenko (UKR), 7-6.

Ben Bratton (USA) was looking to make an upset bid of his own, but fell in the opening round to Alfredo Rota (ITA) 15-14 in overtime.  Cody Mattern (USA) won his first match against Frederik Von Der Osten (DEN) 15-5 and lost in the 32 to Kyoung Doo Park (KOR) 5-1.

Other fencers from the American zone currently up for Olympic qualification are Ruben Limardo (VEN) (a top-12) and Hugues Boisvert-Simard (CAN) (the regional #2 behind Kelsey.)

New World #1 Ranking

With the victory, Pizzo moves up from 11th in the world to claim the new #1 ranking.  Grumier, the former #1, fell to 7th in the rankings.

US fencer Seth Kelsey also fell in the rankings, dropping to 18th while teammate Soren Thompson climbed to 10th.

Final Results: 2011 Men’s Epee World Championship