The US fencing team opened up the weekend’s action at the 2012 Cadet World Championships with medals in 3 of the first 4 events.
Sara Taffel (New York City, N.Y.) and Andrew Mackiewicz (Westwood, Mass.) each earned silver medals in their Cadet World Championships debuts on Saturday in Moscow, Russia.
Kristina Samsonova (RUS) won the Cadet Women’s Foil event, defeating Taffel 15-12. Jaesung Jung (KOR) earned gold in Cadet Men’s Saber with a 15-8 win over Mackiewicz in the final.
On Sunday, the US placed two medalists in Cadet Women’s Saber as Skyla Powers (Decatur, GA) and Francesca Russo (Wayne, NJ) fought their way to the medal round before falling in their semi-final bouts.
Powers came out of the preliminary rounds seeded 8th and made her way to the top-4 where she faced Anastasia Gogoleva (RUS). Gogoleva won their bout 15-7. In the other semi-final bout, Russo faced off against Hungary’s Anna Marton. Late in the bout Marton held onto a single point lead at 12-11. Russo was unable to find the answer at the late stage of the bout and Marton went onto the finals with a 15-12 victory.
In the final bout, Gogoleva powered through to the gold medal in front of a home crowd with a 15-9 victory.
The Cadet Men’s Foil featured a gold medal win by Japan as Kyosuke Matsuyama (JPN) defeated Francesco Ingargiola (ITA) 15-14 in the final bout.
The final 4 featured two Japanese fencers in one semi-final (Matsuyama and Masamichi Sakata) and a European match of Ingargiola vs. Andras Nemeth (HUN) in the other semi-final.
Video coverage of the Cadet and Junior World Championships is available via the FIE’s YouTube Channel with live broadcasts of the matches each day.
Daily photo gallery uploads are also available on Fencing.Net’s Facebook Page.