Olympic Qualifying

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Do any of you masters/mistresses of knowledge know how to keep track of how fencers are progressing in qualifying for the Olympic team?

Is it solely the senior national point standings? Are there special designated tournaments that apply? When do the points this year start counting towards Olympic placement?

I don't seem to find anything in the handbook that deals with Olympic stuff. There are quite a few fencers my kids are friends with who have Olympic aspirations. It would be good to know.

[edew]

It's quite complicated. The top-24 in the world are automatics to the Olympics. If your team is top-4 in the world (at the end of the season, which I'm not sure when that is prior to the Olympics, maybe by May 2004), then there are three automatics from your country. And then, it's up to your country to decide who goes.

if those who go are also on the top-24, then they're not counted as the top-24. Then those below 24 in the world will be added.

Then, there's the zonal qualifiers with one from each zone, except two from Europe (I think).

Basically, if there's no team from the US in any one weapon, the US fencer has to make it via being top-24 (minus those who are already top-24, but are part of a team, which usually is the case), or the zonal method.

I think the US shold be able to field a men's sabre team and possibly a men's foil team. It's too bad that the two weapons where the US has a good chance of fielding a team, women's foil and women's sabre, don't have team events at this upcoming 2004 Olympics.

If a country does not field a team in a weapon, then at most two members from that country are eligible to fence in the individuals portion of the competition.

In a nutshell, the national points standings have very little to do with making the Olympics. It's basically international points.

[a517dogg]

is tamir bloom the only us mens epeeist to qualify through zonal thingy?

and is just some tournement that you win, or is it points for zonal as well? if tourney, is it pan am champs, or something else?

[edew]

Top two from zonal. The zonal competition has about 16 entrants on average.

Since the zonal qualifier was only implemented at the last 2000 Olympics, and since Tamir was the only one to qualify for epee, well, yes, Tamir was the only men's epeeist to have qualified through the zonal qualifiers.

[The_Claw]

if the top 24 fencers were to go, how to they develop uniformity since they'd come from different places?

[a517dogg]

?????

They don't develope uniformity, they compete against each other.

[nahouw]

Here's the link for the finalized version of the criteria for Olympic qualification:

http://www.fie.ch/federation/Lettres...ersion-ANG.pdf

[oiuyt]

It's even more complicated for Athens than what Eric described. Now there are two situations, WF/WS and the other 4 weapons, which are handled seperately (no team path for WF/WS obviously). There's now a limit that w/o a team a country can't get more than 1 fencer in each weapon. The Zonal competition is only open to countries w/o an entrant through another method, each eligible country can only send 1 fencer to the Zonal competition, the top N from the Zonal competition (where N depends on the Zone, ours, the America's, both North and South, has N==2) qualify.

Tamir was the only US entry into the zonal competition (we had qualifiers already in the other 4 weapons) which he won, thereby qualifying. It's a single competition rather than points.

Unlike EDew I'm not cofident that we'll qualify any teams to Athens. We jsut haven't been placing very highly so far. The one possible exception is that there was talk of having the top-4 teams in the world, plus the #1 team from each zone qualify. If we're only competing against the Western Hemisphere I'd say we have a good shot at qualifying teams.

According to the CFF the date for selection is 3/31/2004 with Zonals to be held in April.

And then there's Greece. As the host Greece gets I think 8 entries (maybe it's 5) which they can use in any of the 10 events (where a team counts as 3-4 entries I believe). These numbers could all be slightly off, but in any case, Greece, as host, gets a number of entries to distribute as they see fit.

-B :)

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Pity about the women's sabre team...especially after their gold medal performance in Budapest last month.

[DJ Apostrophe]

oiuyt,
how is WS/WF supposed to work then? Is it top24 on points (with a max of how many per country?) then just the zonal qualifier?
just curious...
-w

[edew]

I believe in the events with a team component, there will be 40 competitors. In the events without a team component, there are only 32. But that's just a figure I just pulled out from my figurative back hole.

[eze]

Looking over the fie pdf (and noticing the veritable dearth of ranked fencers in N. and S. America on the point list from countries other than the US and Canada)--it seems the US is guaranteed at least one spot in each weapon and will probably qualify a few mens teams.


Here are my predictions for the US:



Men's epee:

3 fencers

(It will be close between the US and Canadian teams--but I'm going with the home team on this one)


Men's Foil:

1 fencer (I predict Cuba will take the team spot)


Men's Sabre:

3 fencers



Women's Epee:

1 fencer

(I predict Canada will take the team spot)



Women's Foil:

1 fencer


Women's Sabre:

2 fencers

( 1 via top 8 Fie, 1 via top AOR Fie by zone)


So 11 US fencers total at Athens in 2004 (minus up to 3 additional fencers if the US mens epee and mens sabre teams simultaneously choke)