TOKYO, Japan, Aug. 1, 2021—France has won gold in men’s team foil at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Nine teams participated in the day’s event, which was the ninth and final day of Olympic fencing competition at Tokyo’s Makuhari Messe Hall B in the Chiba prefecture.
In the gold medal round, France won against ROC, 45-28. This is the eighth time France has won the Olympic men’s team foil title, more than any other nation. The bronze medal went to USA over Japan, 45-31.
“I don’t realize yet what’s happened, but we’re enjoying this incredible moment”, said France’s Erwann Le Pechoux. “I’m so proud to fence with these guys. We wanted to give nothing away and also be very strong and focused on each touch. Actually, the match against Egypt at the beginning of the day was also very hard in a way because we were under a lot of pressure knowing we wanted to win the gold. We are very proud to write a small part of history.”
“We’re feeling overwhelmed that we’re not going back with empty hands”, said ROC’s Timur Safin. “But we got a medal and of course we’re feeling happy. Obviously, we were thinking about how to win and get better results, and we were doing our best. Even though we didn’t get the gold, we’re still happy and we’ll do better next time.”
“I think our experience really helped, and no one person on the team was responsible for our loss to ROC”, said USA’s Gerek Meinhardt. “We didn’t put blame on anyone, we knew we had fought as hard as we could. What happened, happened and we were ready to go out and fight for every touch that we could.” His teammate, Alexander Massialas, added, “For our bronze medal, we stayed positive, got loose, and came out fighting. Even though the match was close, we did a good job of getting an extra touch early in each bout, and that one-by-one progress allowed us to create a comfortable victory.”
Final ranking for men’s team foil included France (gold), ROC (silver), USA (bronze), Japan, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong China, Egypt and Canada.
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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