{mosimage}The US Men’s Epee team is poised to break seed and get into the medal rounds. All three fencers competing in the individual events have placed within the top 8 and 2 have placed in the top 3 this season. Seth Kelsey has quietly worked his way up to the #11 world ranking. Will the world #1 Rota fall or will Christoph Marik of Austria continue his winning ways?
37 fencers are competing in the Men’s Epee Individual tournament at the Athens Olympic Games. The invitations were earned by a combination of either competing in the team event (24 fencers), by being the top fencers remaining in the region (7 fencers), or by winning the final regional qualification tournaments (5 fencers). One final entry was obtained by Greece for hosting the Games.
Fencers Entered in the Men’s Epee Individual Event:
| World Rank | Name | First name | Country | Points |
| 1 | ROTA | Alfredo | ITA | 220 |
| 2 | FISCHER | Marcel | SUI | 182 |
| 3 | MARIK | Christoph | AUT | 174 |
| 4 | JEANNET | Fabrice | FRA | 142 |
| 5 | BOCZKO | Gabor | HUN | 123 |
| 6 | BOISSE | Eric | FRA | 119 |
| 7 | ZHAO | Gang | CHN | 118 |
| 11 | KELSEY | Weston Seth | USA | 106 |
| 13 | FERNANDEZ | Silvio | VEN | 105 |
| 14 | KOLOBKOV | Pavel | RUS | 100 |
| 17 | OBRY | Hugues | FRA | 96 |
| 19 | SCHMID | Sven | GER | 90 |
| 22 | IMRE | Geza | HUN | 85 |
| 24 | LEE | Sang Yup | KOR | 82 |
| 25 | THOMPSON | Soren | USA | 82 |
| 27 | KOVACS | Ivan | HUN | 77 |
| 28 | MATTERN | Cody | USA | 75 |
| 31 | INOSTROZA BUDINICH | Paris A. | CHI | 72 |
| 32 | KHVOROST | Maksym | UKR | 70 |
| 35 | STRIGEL | Daniel | GER | 66 |
| 36 | CARRILLO AYANA | Andres | CUB | 66 |
| 37 | FIEDLER | Joerg | GER | 62 |
| 41 | ROBINSON | Seamus | AUS | 56 |
| 45 | XIE | Yongjun | CHN | 53 |
| 48 | TOURCHINE | Igor | RUS | 47 |
| 49 | MAHMOUD | Yasser | EGY | 46 |
| 56 | WANG | Lei | CHN | 38 |
| 58 | SAIF EL DIN SABRY | Mohanad | EGY | 37 |
| 66 | KARUCHENKO | Dmitriy | UKR | 33 |
| 68 | KOTCHETKOV | Serguey | RUS | 32 |
| 92 | NIKISHIN | Bogdan | UKR | 22 |
| 109 | AMBALOF | Georges | GRE | 16 |
| 129 | NABIL | Ahmed | EGY | 12 |
| 132 | NYISZTOR | Alexandru | ROM | 12 |
| 218 | RAMI | Aissam | MAR | 5 |
| 385 | OUNIS | Abdelfid | ALG | 2 |
| 999 | RATHPRASERT | Siriroj | THA | 0 |
The fencers will be entered into a direct elimination table with the seeding based on their world ranking. The final seeding will not take place until the night before the competition.
Outlook
Current World #1 Alfredo Rota (ITA) has won 2 of the 3 last Grand Prix events, but his last world cup tournament victory was in March of this year. The most recent Grand Prix was won by World #2 Marcel Fischer. The winningest fencer this season, however, has been #3 Christoph Marik of Austria. His 4 tournament victories are the most this season, but Rota’s 3 victories earned more points.
The Men’s Epee field is very deep and world cup tournaments have been won by fencers ranked as low as #44 in the world. The strongest US performance this season was a Silver Medal placement for Cody Mattern at the Vancouver world cup. Soren Thompson took 2nd at the final tournament of the season and #11 ranked Seth Kelsey won the June world cup event in Carolina while also earning 2 3rd place finishes this season.
Based on the preliminary tournament bracket, Kelsey holds the #8 seed. He may switch with the #7 seed before the Games, but either way he will have a match the he should win followed by a tough bout to get to the top-8 for a possible shot at Rota or Fischer.
Teammates Thompson and Mattern may be waiting for him, however, as they currently hold the 15th and 17th seeds. They are set up for possible matches against the world #1 and #2 fencers in the round of 16.
If any of the Americans break seed, then they will have the momentum to earn a medal for the United States.
Christoph Marik (AUT) and current World Champion Fabrice Jeannet (FRA) look to have clear paths to the medal round. Quite a number of good fencers and sleepers are grouped in the other sections of the bracket. If there are no surprises (but in epee there are always surprises), these two will be in medal contention.
The sleeper in this event will be former world champion Pavel Kolobkov. He did not compete in the 2003 World Championships due to flight delays in Paris, France caused by a worker strike. He has also only shown up for 4 events this year – winning 2 and placing 3rd in one. He will have to fight through the current #2 seed to get to the medal rounds, but he has proven to be very dangerous.
Picks:
Gold: Marik (AUT)
Silver: Kolobkov (RUS)
Bronze: Kelsey (USA)/Boczko (HUN)