2011 Fencing World Championships Begin Sunday

The 2011 Fencing World Championships start up this weekend with 953 individuals competing across the 6 fencing disciplines.

The largest event will be the Men’s Epee event with 228 competitors and the smallest is Women’s Foil at 114 competitors. Men’s Epee also boasts the largest team event with 41 teams entered while Women’s Foil and Women’s Sabre have the smallest team events with 22 and 24 teams entered.

The World Championships begin with preliminary rounds on the 9th and 10th of October followed by direct elimination matches from the top-64 on starting on October 11th. The individual events are key to Olympic qualification for Women’s Sabre and Men’s Epee and will also assist in qualification for the other events for individuals who do not have teams qualified.

The team portion of the World Championships begin on October 14th. These events count towards Olympic qualification for the team events and with crowded fields in Europe and Asia, the results from World’s could set the field for the 2012 Games. (See: Team Olympic Qualification Updates)

The United States comes into the World Championships having swept the gold medals at the Pan American Zonal Championships and is also looking to repeat the success in the 2010 Worlds where the US Men’s Epee team took the silver medal and Mariel Zagunis took gold in the individual Women’s Sabre event.

Hopes for Olympic qualification rest on performance at the worlds for both US and Russian women’s sabre fencers. Because the Olympic qualification is limited to 2 fencers per country, Russia and the United States are left with individuals who rank high, but would not qualify for the Olympics.

Russia boasts 3 women in the top-10 and the United States 4 in the top-16, but only the top 2 fencers will get to go. That currently places Julia Gavrilova (RUS), Ibtihaj Muhammad (USA), and Dagmara Wozniak (USA) on the outs, but within striking distance of their teammates – Daria Schneider (USA) and Ekaterina Diatchenko (RUS) or Sophia Velikaia (RUS).  (See the current qualification status in Women’s Sabre)

In Men’s Epee Alfredo Rota (ITA) currently stands as the 13th ranked fencer, but the 3rd Italian and so would need to unseat Matteo Tagliariol (ITA) to make it to London.  (See: Current Men’s Epee qualifiers)

Fencing fans will be able to watch the finals of the 2011 Fencing World Championships live via YouTube and the new FIE promotional web site, FIE.org.  Fencing.Net will also be writing daily updates and receiving photos from FIE Official Photographer Serge Timacheff.