Mariel Zagunis is on a campaign to repeat as Women’s Sabre world champion and the Men’s Epee and Women’s Foil fencers look to cause some damage in the elimination brackets as 11 out of 12 US fencers advance to the round of 64 elimination matches.
Day two of the 2010 Fencing World Championships featured preliminary action in Men’s Epee, Women’s Sabre, and Women’s Foil. The only safe fencers were #1 ranked Mariel Zagunis and #13 Dagmara Wozniak who earned byes in the women’s sabre event to the elimination rounds which begin tomorrow (Sat, 11/6).
Men’s epee started with 203 competitors fencing in 27 pools to determine who would advance. Coming out of the pools, US fencers had mixed results. None earned enough victories to be directly promoted to the second day of fencing so each had to fence their way through. Cody Mattern went 3-3 in his pool bouts but lost 13-15 to Jiri Beran of the Czech Republic, he finished 115th.
2008 Olympian Seth Kelsey went 4-2 with two 5-4 losses in his pool and then won two elimination matches against Ozren Debic (CRO) and Ahmed Nabil (EGY) to advance to Sunday’s top-64. He will face off against Kyoung Doo Park (KOR). Ben Bratton lost one pool bout, going 5-1 and defeated Igor Reyzlin (UKR) to advance to the top-64. He is pitted against Chao Huang (CHN) in the top-64. Finally, Ben Ungar went 3-3 and advanced to the top-64 by winning matches against Ayman Alaa El Din Fayz (EGY) and Stefan Cipan (SVK). He’ll face regional rival Ruben Limardo (VEN).
In women’s sabre, Ibtihaj Muhammad went 5-1 and advanced directly to the top-64 where she begins by facing Reka Benko (HUN). Daria Schneider went 4-1 and faces off against Azza Besbes (TUN). Mariel Zagunis and Dagmara Wozniak sat out today’s action and waited to see who they would face in Saturday’s elimination matches. Zagunis, the #1 seed, drew Bulgaria’s Tschomakova and Wozniak will face Anna Varhelyi (HUN).
Finally, a young women’s foil squad saw all 4 fencers advance from pools to the top-64. Doris Willette led the US foilists with a 4-1 record in the pools. Lee Kiefer and Nicole Ross advanced with a 4-2 results in pools. Nzingha Prescod also advanced to the top-64 with a 3-3 pool result.
The fencing action now moves to the Grand Palais where Men’s and Women’s Sabre will compete on Saturday. The foil events are Sunday, followed by epee on Monday. Team events begin on Tuesday, November 9th.
Want to get a little more into the results? Join the Fencing.Net Bracket Challenge and see if you can pick the winners.
