Why the recent success of the US Men’s Epee team (unfortunately) doesn’t matter for this Olympic Quad.
The US Men’s Epee team demonstrated that the 2nd place finish at the 2010 World Championships was no fluke with their 2nd place finish in Tallinn, Estonia. In that event, they avenged their loss to France, defeating the French team 45-40 in the semi-finals before falling to Russia in the finals by a single touch.
The podium finish places the US Epee Team 3rd in the world rankings. Unfortunately, this success is coming in the wrong Olympic cycle. The US Men’s Epee Team will not have the opportunity to medal at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
As part of the IOC “compromise” allowing Women’s Sabre to be a medal event at the Olympics, fencing had to bench two fencing disciplines each Olympic cycle. The FIE has decided on a rotation where every individual event is contested and 4 of the 6 team events are. Each cycle, one men’s and one women’s team is benched. They get a “World Championships” event that year, but the title of World Champion pales in comparison to an Olympic medal.
As a team, the US succeeds despite only having one fencer in the top-32 in the world rankings. Seth Kelsey remains in the top-8 with a #6 world ranking in the individual men’s epee standings. The next best fencers round out the top-64 with Cody Mattern at 50th, Benjamin Bratton at 52nd and Benjamin Ungar at 64th. The 4th man on the Tallinn epee team, Adam Rodney comes in at 108th.
With the current Men’s Epee world rankings, Kelsey would be the only US fencer to qualify for the Olympics in Men’s Epee – there are 7 fencers from the Americas zone with better rankings than Mattern. Ruben Limardo (VEN) is another regional fencer with a bid due to his #10 world ranking.
For the Olympics, 30 fencers will qualify to compete in the Men’s Epee event. (See: The Long and Winding Road to London for qualification details.) The top 12 in the world earn bids, then the next two from each Olympic zone. The final 10 slots are determined by regional qualifying events for countries that have no fencers represented.
The US fans should be ecstatic about the success of the Men’s Epee program. These are the best world rankings ever for a US Men’s fencing team. If the team event were to be contested, there would be growing talk of a US medal and increased expectations put on the Men’s Epee Team Coach, Sebastien Dos Santos.
As it stands now, the team has to look down the road for 2016 to claim Olympic glory. The US can show the world now that it is a contender in epee and build on the success of this Olympic cycle. Hopefully for the US, the core squad that is maturing into a formidable team now will have the desire and financial resources to train through another Olympic cycle and lend their experience to inspire and develop the next round of fencers for the team.
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