2023-07-30 20:16:13
More money: for the third time in a row, the French sabreuses stumbled in the final of the World Fencing Championships, concluded for tricolor fencing with six medals.
Published on: 07/30/2023 – 20:16Modified on: 08/01/2023 – 08:44
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“We hoped for a lot more, book Manon Apithy-Brunet. We are going to take advantage of this medal all the same because it is difficult to win and we are going to work even harder so that next year, it will be another medal, much more full, more beautiful.”
While a new title was reaching out to them after 2018, the Bleues du saber lost the thread of their match against Hungary (45-38) in the same poster as in Cairo last year.
After taking control by counting up to seven touches in advance (25-18), they cracked at the end: the world No.1 Sara Balzer suffered an 11-5 in her penultimate stint allowing the Hungarians to believe it and come back with a touch (30-29). Neither Caroline Quéroli (6-3) nor Manon Apithy-Brunet (5-1) managed to reverse the momentum afterwards. “I don’t think we let go, says Sara Balzer. They are the ones who really accelerated.”
Disappointment of the day, the foil fencers, Olympic champions and bronze medalists at the Worlds last year, fell in the quarters against China (45-38).
“For two years, we don’t often beat the big guys”
“We are a strong team when everything is going well, but high-level sport is not always linear, otherwise it would be too simple, regrets national coach Emeric Clos.”For two years, the big ones, we don’t beat them often.”
“On this match, I can blame myself”, takes on Enzo Lefort. I have everything it takes to be able to go up in my second stint, but I played small arm.
The sabreuses silver medal represents the sixth and final podium for the French team in Lombardy after the coronation of Marie-Florence Candassamy in epee, the silver medals in women’s foil as well as men’s epee and bronze by Romain Cannone in epee and Enzo Lefort in foil.
A correct balance sheet one year from the Paris-2024 Olympic Games but two notches below the monster harvest of Cairo last year (8 medals including four titles) which had allowed the Blues to rank best nation.
“With three individual medals and three by team, we held our rank”, judge Pierre Guichot, in charge of the high level with the national technical direction.
For the race for Olympic qualification, the royal road to which is the team classification allowing three shooters to be sent to the individual tournament, the table is advantageous: no team is classified lower than sixth.
“We are the only nation in this case, observes the national technical director Jean-Yves Robin. The primary objective which is to qualify all the teams naturally, without using a ‘wild card’ (given to the host country) seems completely achievable. ” While two weapons, the women’s sword and the men’s saber had missed the plane for Tokyo.
“Still bitter”
Less brilliant, the Blues have won only one title, a first since 2017. This places them in fourth place in the table despite the second total of medals in the competition.
“There is still bitterness, we only brought back one gold medal against four previously. We lost three times in the final and in the teams, it’s a bit offensive”, admits Jean-Yves Robin.
Especially since Russia, one of the best nations in the sport, is absent from the team events and its best shooters have not obtained the status of “neutral individual athlete” allowing them to participate in the individual event.
In their absence, the Italians almost all won, transcended by their furious tifosi, they piled up ten medals including four titles. An effect on which Pierre Guichot counts in a year in Paris. “We have to take inspiration from them, they were really galvanized by the crowd. It’s up to us to find the ingredients so that it has the same effect on us rather than inhibiting us.”
With AFP
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