Lee and Egorian head strong field at FIE Grand Prix in Seoul

The latest event in the second part of the 2016-2017 senior world fencing season features the women’s and men’s sabre competitions and follows closely on the heels of what has already been a busy March.

Long Beach, California, USA, was first destination for the Absolute Fencing Gear FIE Grand Prix and the men’s and women’s foil event. That was a prelude to last weekend which saw the Westend Grand Prix in Budapest, Hungary, with the men’s and women’s epee competitions, plus also the women’s World Cup team and individual sabre competitions in Yangzhou, China.

This weekend’s action promises to be another exciting and intriguing competition, particularly if the last sabre Grand Prix held in Cancun, Mexico, in December last year is anything to go by.

Italy’s Luigi Samele caused something of a surprise on this occasion by beating world number one Jonghyun Lee to take the gold medal in the men’s competition. The women’s competition ran relatively true to form as Russia’s Yana Egorian beat world number three Anna Marton of Hungary to take the gold medal in the women’s competition.

Both Lee and Egorian will be in action in their respective competitions this weekend, with Lee heading a men’s sabre event which will feature 17 of the top 20 and eight of the current world’s top ten, including Hungary’s Aron Szilagyi (world number two), France’s Vincent Ansetett (ranked three) USA’s Daryl Homer (ranked five) and Korea’s Bongil Gu.(ranked six).

The competition will be equally as fierce in the women’s sabre event with 112 fencers scheduled to compete, including 14 of the top 20 and eight of top 10.
Egorian and Marton – ranked number one and three respectively – will joined by world number two France’s Manon Brunet, fresh from her gold medal winning performance in Yangzhou last weekend; Korea’s Jiyeon Kim (ranked four) and USA Mariel Zagunis (ranked seven).

The action gets underway in Seoul with the qualifying rounds in both the men’s and women’s competitions on Friday 31 March before the elimination rounds and final medal matches on Saturday 1 April.