First bend to negotiate on the short road to Paris-2024, the Cairo Fencing Worlds from Friday are already the penultimate major tournament of the short Olympiad before the home Games for the Blues.
Two years before the Paris Olympics and for a return to pre-covid normal of the calendar with these first Worlds since 2019, a first place in the medal table in Egypt is nothing of a mirage for the team of France, back at the top of the world hierarchy alongside Italy and Russia.
The absence of the latter, banned from competitions overseen by the International Fencing Federation (FIE) due to the invasion of Ukraine, opens up prospects for French fencers only ahead of those of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in Tokyo last summer.
The France team has not dominated the record of the World Championships for fifteen years and those of Saint Petersburg in 2007. At the following Olympic Games, in Beijing in 2008, the Blues had finished best nation.
In fencing, unlike many other sports, deadlines preceding the Olympic Games are rarely wrong.
Since Tokyo, French fencing has had to absorb a few upheavals in one year: a change of status (for the Olympic champion Romain Cannone), a renewal of the team (among the silversmiths who are Olympic vice-champions) and an upheaval in the management (at the head of the male sword and the female saber as male).
Promising European Championships
“Between injured Manon (Brunet-Apithy), Cécila (Berder) young mother, Charlotte (Lembach) in late recovery after first deciding to stop and the change of coach, that’s a lot”listed last month before the European Championships in Antalya Matthieu Gourdain, who became a women’s saber coach at the start of the school year.
Without three of its four Olympic vice-champions and especially without its leader Manon Brunet-Apithy, double Olympic medalist in Tokyo (individual bronze and team silver) and world No.1 until her right shoulder injury , the French women’s saber returned from Turkey with a brilliant record: team gold, bronze for Sara Balzer (the only element remaining from the trip to Japan).
Like the overall French results at these European Championships in Turkey where Russia was already absent. With eleven medals including three titles, France was ranked runner-up to Italy, which collected fourteen medals, half of which in foil.
Obry returned from China
After failed Games in their weapon of choice (two medals in Tokyo, no title), the Azzurri led by maestro Stefano Cerioni signed a raid in Antalya.
Enough to feed some regrets on the other side of the transalpine border. The Italian fencing master was very close after the Olympics to joining the France team before turning around in the face of the long-drawn-out tripartite negotiations between the French Federation, the National Sports Agency and Cerioni. ANS high performance manager Claude Onesta defended himself by pointing out that the “first priority” was here “finalization of the commitment of Hugues Obry”maker of Rio-2016 team gold.
Returning from China, where, under his magisterium, Sun Yiwen was crowned Olympic champion, Hugues Obry took charge of the destiny of the French men’s team with already a lot of promise.
Romain Cannone and Yannick Borel, crowned European champion last month, occupy the first two places in the world ranking, Alexandre Bardenet, the seventh. Not to mention the emergence, outside Insep, of Nelson Pourtier-Lopez, winner of the World Cup stage in France, the Challenge Monal.
Only the Obry swordsmen lack a team title after their bronze medal in Antalya. Curiosity of the covid calendar, they will defend their world title in Cairo, three years later.
