All four Women's Foilists and 2 in Men's Epee Advance to Top-64
The 2009 Fencing World Championships continued on Thursday in Antalya, Turkey, with preliminary-round matches in the women’s foil and men’s epee disciplines.
Of the eight US fencers competing across the two divisions, 6 advanced out of the qualification rounds to Sunday's final tables of 64 fencers, which will run in direct elimination format and conclude with the finals.
In women’s foil, a newly minted American squad took to the piste. All four women's foilists had to compete in the preliminary rounds and all four found a way to advance to Sunday's elimination table.
Americans Ambika Singh, Nzingha Prescod, and Lee Kiefer won convincingly in their pool match ups to qualify directly to the top-64. 2008 Olympic Team member Doris Willette faced an elimination bout to qualify for the top-64. She won 12-6 and will face off against Italy's Margherita Granbassi on Sunday.
The format for the 2009 World Championships is slightly different than years past. Here's the breakdown:
Top 16 fencers in the FIE world rankings automatically qualify for the DE of 64.
The top 16 fencers out of pools qualify directly to the final day's DE of 64
The bottom 20% of fencers out of pools are eliminated
The remaining fencers compete in a preliminary DE table until 32 remain to fill out the DE table of 64
The final day of competition is run as a single elimination DE table.
In men's epee, the US fencers did not fare as well against the deep talent pool. Benjamin Bratton won all of his pool bouts and advanced directly to Sunday's elimination rounds. Eric Hansen won only one of his pool bouts and failed to qualify and the Cody Mattern won one qualification match 15-4 before falling to Poland's Krzysztof Mikolajczak 15-10. 2008 Olympian Seth Kelsey had a bye into Sunday's elimination round.
UniversalSports.com will broadcast Sunday’s finals live -- the second of six such days -- beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET.
All four Women's Foilists and 2 in Men's Epee Advance to Top-64
