GBR in Berne - Report by Paul Sanchez

Report by Paul Sanchez.

We saw the start of the new season kick-off with the Berne World Cup. Being the first competition after the Olympics, it was no surprise that many new faces were represented, including a completely new Korean team, but also thanks to Covid, it was impossible to predict what to expect from some of the more familiar faces after so long without competing. 

The first surprise was seeing Venezuela’s Ruben Limardo Gascon, the London 2012 Olympic champion, taking the title, which was his first World Cup gold medal in 7 years. A great performance against Italy’s Andrea Santarelli in the semi-finals, saw him in the finals, where he went on to beat Alexander Bardenet, who himself came through his teammate and reigning Olympic champion Romain Cannone.

Day 3 took us into the team event, where our ranking of 25th in a field of 33, meant that we missed the round of 64 and started directly into the 32. The first match saw us against a very new and relatively young Ukrainian team, compared to the team who had just a few months ago competed in the Olympics. The team was made up of Stankevych (finished 13th), Sych (finished 27th), Svichkar (finished 51st) and world no. 2 and Olympic bronze medalist Reizlin (finished 33rd). 

After taking an early 4-2 lead with a great start in the opening match, we very quickly found ourselves trailing and in a position where we were forced to attack. Unfortunately on this occasion, it was too much for us and we Ukrainian went through into the round of 16 with a 45/25 victory, leaving us with a 27th place finish. 

Ukrainian went on to win their next match against Kazakhstan 45/32 before losing to Japan, who are the reigning Olympic team champions. They went on to finish in 6th place, after beating Denmark in the 5-8 playoff before losing their final match to France in the 5-6. 

The rest of day 3 showed a brilliant display of fencing, with Russia taking the gold against Spain in a sudden death priority minute and Japan taking the bronze over Hungary.

Thanks,

Paul