Team Standings – Olympic Qualification

In the team fencing events for the 2012 Olympic Games, there will be eight qualification spots open for teams.  (Great Britain could enter a 9th team into an event using their allotment of fencer entries if they wish.)

Here’s a quick update on how the various contests stand leading up to the final competitions for Olympic Qualifying.

First, the rules: The qualification goes to the top 4 teams regardless of zone, followed by one team per zone not already in the top 4.  The only restriction is that to be eligible a team must rank within the top 16 of the FIE World Rankings.  Should a team be the top in the zone but not in the top-16, then that spot will go to the next highest ranked team regardless of zone.

Women’s Epee

The field is all but set for the team entries for Women’s Epee.  The top 4 currently stand as Romania, China, Italy and South Korea.  The zonal entries are Russia, the United States, and Japan.  South Africa is the top African team, but is ranked at 21st, which forfeits their qualification.  The next highest ranked team would be France, who squeaks in using the vacated African zonal spot.

Two team events remain – Barcelona, Spain and Saint-Maur, France.  Given results from the season so far, the only drama remaining is whether South Africa will show up and post a strong result.  They haven’t posted a result better than 17th in the current season and would need to get a top-8 finish to have a chance at qualifying.

The only spoiler would be for Korea to lose out on their 4th place spot.  Dropping to 5th would still qualify them in the Asian zonal spot, but that would punt Japan out.

Here’s the chart of the team qualification standings for Women’s Epee.  Highlighted in yellow means top-4 for qualification; orange means top in the zone.  Not highlighted means they aren’t qualified but there for you to see how the points line up.

Women’s Foil

The field is looking stable in Women’s Foil as well.  Italy is well ahead of the pack for the #1 seed, followed by Russia, Korea and Poland.  The USA is 5th and the top from the American zone.  Hungary is 10 points ahead of Germany for the Euro zone and Japan is more than 20 points ahead of China to claim the Asian zone.  Egypt is atop the African zone, but is right at 16th in the FIE rankings, so a slip up and their spot vacates and would go to Germany.

The next events for Women’s Team are this weekend.

Men’s Saber

Russia, Germany, Italy, and Belarus are the top 4.  Belarus at #4 is over 30 points ahead of Romania at the #5 spot.  Romania holds the European zonal spot followed by South Korea, the USA, and then the African spot.

Egypt sits at 19th in the world rankings and was a no show for the last team event in Padua, so expect this spot to go to the next team.  That team is currently France, but only 2 points separate France and Hungary.  That spot should be decided on March 18th in Moscow.

Men’s Foil

Italy and China are out ahead as the top 2 seeds followed by France and Germany.  Japan is at 5th place holding the Asian qualifying slot followed by Russia and the USA.  Great Britain is the 10th ranked nation but can be entered since they are the host nation.  The African spot goes to Egypt who qualifies by sitting at 12th in the world rankings.

There isn’t much of a chance for these rankings to move around as it would take a 20 point swing to alter a qualification slot at this point.

In all of the team events, the onus is now on the top individuals in the nations that don’t look to qualify to try to earn an individual spot at the Games.  We’ll look at those early in the week.