TOKYO, Japan, Aug. 1, 2021—On the ninth and final day of fencing competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, nine men’s foil teams have completed quarterfinals and placement rounds through the semifinals. This evening, France faces ROC for the gold medal and USA fences Japan for the bronze.
In the table of 16, Germany defeated Canada, 45-31, to advance to the quarterfinals where they lost to USA, 45-36. In the semifinal rounds, France defeated Japan, 45-42, and ROC beat USA, 45-41. For the fifth through eighth placements, Germany withdrew due to injuries, so Italy won fifth place by default, while Hong Kong China beat Egypt, 45-21, for seventh and eighth places.
“It’s a good competition for us, we came to get a gold medal, and now we have that opportunity”, said France’s Erwann Le Pechoux. “While we imagined we would be fencing against the U.S. in the final, it’s a strange competition. Italy lost against Japan and ROC beat the United States, so in the final we’ll do our best to get the gold. We don’t know the ROC team very well, the fencers and team they sent are very young. We’ve fenced them perhaps once in individual and never as a team, so we don’t have any information. We’ll try to focus on our fencing, and I think if we can fence as we know we can, we can win. If we try to fence because of our opponents, it’s not as good for us.”
“I’ve been concentrating and I gave my best performance today”, said Japan’s Kyosuke Matsuyama. “Our strategy for the bronze-medal match against USA will be similar to how we fenced Italy and France, but if the gap gets bigger, we’ll have to up our team’s tactical performance—either increasing or decreasing our aggression—in order to have the possibility of winning.”
Complete information about fencing results and athletes at the Olympic Games may be found on the official Olympic website, and on the FIE website, www.FIE.org.
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