The French fencing teams are designed around the team events, which showed when final qualifications were posted on the International Fencing Federation (FIE) site this week. Though France failed to qualify a team in women's foil, they end the qualifying process ranked at #1 for the remaining three team events: Women's Sabre, Men's Sabre, and Men's Epee.
March marks the last month for earning points to qualify teams and individuals for the 2008 Olympic Fencing competitions in Beijing.
The last Men's Epee team competition was held in Stockholm on March 9th, which sealed the fate for the US squad and one more event remails for the men's and women's sabre squads to attempt to change their seeding, but at this point most of the team spots are set.
Two-time Olympian and former number one world ranked fencer Keeth Smart captured the silver medal this weekend in Budapest, Hungary. Smart defeated many of the world's top fencers along the way, including the number 6th ranked fencer, Yakimenko of Russia, the number 15th ranked Pillet of France and number 18th ranked Dumitrescu of Romania before falling to the 5th ranked Nemcsik of Hungary. The bout took place in front of close to a thousand spectators cheering for the home-town favorite and 2004 Olympic Silver medalist Nemcsik.
Jeff Bukantz (pictured, left) is the Captain of the US Olympic team and was the FIE observer for referees in Orleans, France.
Serge Timacheff (FencingPhotos.com, FencingRadio) caught up with Jeff and this 24 minute interview brings us up to speed on where the US team sits with Olympic qualification.
The US Women's Sabre team has locked up an Olympic qualification, so now the focus for them is on seeding. Other US teams are close to qualifying but the qualifications and seedings are still in play.
"The key for our fencers in the next 6 weeks is to get our teams qualified and then focus on the seeding. We (the US) should have a good result this time." says Jeff.
March marks the last month for earning points to qualify teams and individuals for the 2008 Olympic Fencing competitions in Beijing. 
Jeff Bukantz (pictured, left) is the Captain of the US Olympic team and was the FIE observer for referees in Orleans, France.
