Olympic Preview: Men’s Foil Individual

How the field was chosen:

{mosimage}36 fencers will compete in the individual men’s foil tournament.  The first 24 entries are given to fencers competing in the team event.  The remaining 12 were determined by zonal world ranking and by a final continental qualifying tournament in each Olympic zone.

Fencing.Net took a look at the qualified teams and individuals and came up with the following list of fencers, sorted by current FIE world ranking. (Note, this is not the official list of competitors as the individual federations have not all named their teams. We made the assumption that a country would enter the three fencers with the best FIE ranking.)

Fencers in the Men’s Foil Individual Event 

Set the table for the tournament:
This listing is used to determine the seeding into the direct elimination table. The table is not set until the night before the event. When drawing up the table, the fencers will be grouped in pairs and draw lots to determine if there will be a “flip-flop”. What happens is the #1 and #2 fencers would draw lots and see if they keep their seeds, or switch them. Then, the 3rd and 4th seeds would draw, and so on down to the bottom of the field. This juggles up the field a little bit, but still protects the top seeds from fencing each other until the end. (So, #1 and #2 seeds will not meet until the finals, they may just switch brackets.)

It’s really not very complicated. It just means that you can’t go and print out a bracket now and make your picks for the final-4. No Fencing.Net pools this year.

The tournament is a single elimination tournament. In each round, the fencers meet for a bout where the first to 15 points wins. The winner advances to the next round, the loser heads back to the Olympic Village.

The Italians are primed.

{mosimage}Andrea Cassara is the early favorite for the gold medal. He is always strong in tournaments and is peaking at the right time. He has won 3 of the last 5 World Cup events and 3rd in the other 2. Cassara’s toughest competition could come from either teammate Salvatore Sanzo, who won several mid-season tournaments, or the reigning World Champion Peter Joppich of Germany (pictured).

The Italians go into the tournament seeded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and could very well sweep the medals.

US Outlook

The US fencers (Dan Kellner, Jedediah Dupree, and Jon Tiomkin) have the 27th, 30th and 31st seeds in the tournament. Kellner is the only one with a bye in the first round, but he will face a German (either 6th seed Bissdorf or 5th seed Joppich) in the round of 32.

Dupree and Tiomkin have 1st round matches against the bottom of the field, but then would face very difficult bouts in the 2nd round. Dupree would face either #3 Simone Vanni (ITA) or #4 Brice Guyart (FRA). Tiomkin would face an Italian in round 2 – either Cassara or Sanzo.

Prediction:

I like Guyart’s style and fencing, but he has not done well since being dismantled by Cassara at the St. Petersburg Cup in March. I think that Joppich will get by Guyart to make the final 4. The lone wild card looks to be China’s Hanxiong Wu. Wu has made it into the top 10 having attended only half of the tournaments that the Europeans have. There is usually a fencer out of China or Korea that does well at World Championship and Olympic events. Wu will have to battle through one of the top 2 Italians to make the final 3. If he is able to solve the Italian’s power-march, then he will have a clear shot at Gold.

Gold: Cassara, ITA (Too strong at this point. Peaking at the right time.)
Silver: Joppich, GER (Breaks through against Guyart, but Cassara has learned from his teammate’s loss at the 2003 World Championships.)
Bronze: Wu, CHN (Upset win against Sanzo in the top-8, but is avenged by Cassara in the final 4.)