Padova, Italy – In the bracket of 64, team USA fencers Daryl Homer faces Zhong (CHINA), Tim Morehouse faces off against Gal (HUN), Fischl Vs. Tarrantino (ITA) and Jeff Spear will take on Kim (KOR).
The prize for first place is a new Porsche! Alcohol brand Luxardo and car maker Porsche are sponsoring the competition.
Mike Etropolski, Ben Igoe and Barron Nydam were eliminated on day 1.
Follow results of team USA live on www.twitter.com/timmorehouse
Pictures courtesy of Italian Fencing Federation.
The road to the Paris World Championships for women’s foil continues this weekend in Gdansk, Poland.
Ambika Singh, Lee Kiefer, Nzgingha Prescord, Doris Willette, Nicole Ross, Margeret Lu and Maddie Zeiss are competing in Gdansk, Poland this weekend.
Catch all the updates here and on twitter at: www.twitter.com/timmorehouse
Ambika will be sending me updates and I’ll be posting. Good luck girls!
The girls will be staying in Poland and afterwards and then heading onto Turino, Italy for another competition.
Here’s how the race looks right now for the National Team: (Top 4 Qualify)
RANKING
1 (2988.75 points) Prescod, Nzihgha
2(1827 points) Singh, Ambika
3 (1695 points) Kiefer, Lee
4 (1435 points) Lu, Margaret L.C.
5 (1395 points) Ross, Nicole
6 (1375 points) # Shaito, Mona
7 (1210 points) # Kiefer, Alexandra
8 (1200 points) Willette, Doris
(Photos courtesy of Dagmara Wozniak!)
The USA women’s saber fencing team captured GOLD today in Orleans, France!
Mariel Zagunis, Dagmara Wozniak, Daria Schneider and Emily Jacobson each fenced strongly throughout the day as the US team beat Romania 45-44, Italy 45-29, Ukraine 45-39 and finally the French team 45-44. GO TEAM USA! 
check out the massive jumbotron screens used for the finals!
Here is Dagmara Wozniak’s take on it via FB message moments ago:
I’m just going to say that today was so much fun. I haven’t had such a great team dynamic and really it plays such an important part in how we support each other and fence for each other.
And, from Daria Schneider:
Ed is really great team coach and it wasawesome to have an opportunity to fence so many strong fencers and be able to try out what we have been working on with him in a competitive setting.
And a packed stadium! I hope we do this up right when we have our NYC world cup!
Word up Dags and Daria! Daga kept me posted throughout the day via text message as we fenced here im Budapest. We finished 6th. More on that tomorrow when I have the energy to write another post!
So happy for the girls! We’ll be seeing them in a few days in Moscow for a joint men’s and women’s saber Grand Prix event in Russia!
This is how fencing should be!
From the FIS web site
http://www.federscherma.it/news.asp?i=77799&s=7
PALERMO - Great fencing tonight in Palermo at the Teatro Politeama during the “Memorial Calarese,” a trophy to honor the memory of one of the best Sicilian saber fencers ever. Aldo Montano won in the final bout over Nicolas Limbach 15-10.
With about 1000 people present including Michele Maffei and Rolando Rigoli, the competition started with Nicolas Limbach (GER) against Mamoudou Seta (SEN) with a 15-7 win. Then Giampiero Pastore (ITA) beat Benjamin Reshetnikov (RUS) 15-9.
In the quarter finals Luigi Tarantino (ITA) fenced against the 2008 Olympic Champion Zhong Man (CHN). After an intense bout Zhong won 15-10. Lastly, Aldo Montano (ITA), had a real hard time to beat Jason Rogers (USA) 15-11, after an 8-7 partial.
In the semifinals, Pastore recovered with a 0-4 against Limbach (5-5 first then 7-7), but eventually he lost 9-15. Aldo Montano on the other hand beat Zhong Man 15-13 in the Olympic champions duel.
Montano wa undefeated in the final also. Against the current world champion, Nicolas Limbach, Aldo was ahead from start to finish. The last point at 15-10 was few minutes past midnight, local time.
Our friend Lord Scott Buchheit’s (descended from the Longshanks) company Artwingny did the recent Ray Band sunglasses ad campaign.(Picture above)
We promised him that if we saw the campaign we would take pictures for him….well, the campaign was hard to miss as it was in almost every bus stop from Venice to Padua!
Here you go Scott! Promise kept! Enjoy! (To check out Scott’s company go to: www.artwingny.com)
Bronze Medal Winning Italian Men's Sabre Team
Posted by Jason Rogers
It turns out that it is not only the US Fencers that are having trouble making fencing relevant. The Italian fencing team brought back two individual gold, two individual bronze and three team bronze medals from Beijing, and yet, they are still having difficulty keeping themselves in the public spotlight more permanently than the “15 minutes” that follow the Olympic Games.
A few standouts such as Valentina Vezzali and Margherita Granbassi have crossed over into the mainstream media (on Italy’s equivalent of dancing with the stars and a political talk show respectively), however the rest seem to be having trouble keeping up with these two.
In Europe, especially coutries like France, Italy and Germany, fencing’s popularity far exceeds that of any other sport focused coutries around the world. However, it seems that the greatest impediment to fencing’s popularity is still the issue of explaining the sport to the layperson.
So what’s a fencer think if even the Italians, those with the bluest fencing blood, are struggling? It seems that fencing is at a great crossroads. That is, if fencing wants to grow, it needs to make itself more spectator friendly. Though it has tried this in the past with efforts such as electric scoring, transparent visor masks and timing changes on the scoring machines, it still remains nearly as esoteric as it was 100 years ago to the average person looking on for the first time. Is there any way that we can simplify fencing to something as easy as “put the ball in the hoop” or “spike the ball over the net”? Is it possible that fencing needs to reduce all three weapons to systems that more resemble that of epee (i.e. “hit and don’t be hit”)? I don’t know what the answer is, but it is certainly food for thought. I welcome your comments and suggestions…
Plovdiv Bulgaria Team Final
Posted by Jason Rogers
Final results!
Gold: Italy (Montano, Occhuzzi, Pastore and Tarantino)
Silver: Hungary (Illiasz, Szylagi, Desci and Lontay)
Bronze: France (Sanson, Apithy, Lopez and Anstett)
I guarantee that I spelled at least 3 of those names wrong
US Men’s Sabre Report:
Even though the US Men’s Sabre Team (Rogers, Igoe, Williams and Homer) had a bit of a tough day, it wasn’t all bad. Our fencing is really coming together, and we are showing that we have incredible potential moving forward in these next four years.
Our first round match was with Japan, which is a team that you can never assume will be easy to beat because they move like little ninjas! Seriously, I am not kidding these guys are really fast and getting better by the day. Nevertheless, our first round loss to them was a bit of an “oops,” shall we call it, but let’s not dwell on these things.
We continued to show decent fencing throughout the rest of the day, beating Kazakstan and then Ukraine (which was our first time doing that in recent history I will note).
Then we had a very strange bout with Poland losing by a decent margin and finally finishing 10th place. Dimitri Guy (our coach for the trip) encapsulated it best today when he said, “If we are judging by the result, we didn’t do so good, but if we are talking about our fencing and our potential for the future, I think day was a great indication of big things to come.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. We will continue to do what we are doing, gaining experience along the way and smoothing out the kinks that have developed in the last couple months of training lightly.
Onward and Upwards….Jason signing off from Bulgaria…I have to go take a nap, as our bus is leaving at 2 am for the airport…yes, I am serious…sigh…
