The Frenchman shone in Tbilisi a few weeks before the Olympic meeting.
French fencer Romain Cannone won the Tbilisi Epee World Cup stage on Saturday, dominating Belgian Neisser Loyola 15-10 in the final.
This success comes at just the right time for the Tokyo Olympic champion, four months before the Paris 2024 Games. Especially in the middle of a storm Hugues Obry, despite the resignation of the general manager of the men’s epee last month, deemed insufficient by Romain Cannone and two other slingers in conflict with Obry, Alexandre Bardenet, semi-finalist in Georgia on Saturday, and Yannick Borel, defeated in the quarter-final.
“We’re going straight into the wall,” Romain Cannone said last week in the columns of L’Equipe in the company of the two swordsmen. We cannot continue like this with Hugues in the Olympic project and a national technical director committed to his cause.
An endless liberating howl punctuated his success on Saturday on the Tbilisi track at the end of his first final on the world circuit since his world champion title in Cairo in the summer of 2022.
Romain Cannone also sealed his selection for the Games, being the highest ranked Frenchman at the end of this final World Cup stage set to decide between the French swordsmen. This is undoubtedly even the case for the three rebellious musketeers, the best tricolors on Saturday and well established in the top 10 in the world.
Even if the selection of Bardenet and Borel will be confirmed during a commission, it is difficult to imagine them on the sidelines, unless we see French fencing sinking a little deeper into crisis.
Iron in hand, Cannone demonstrated all the usual panoply of «Here» –his nickname– with his famous touches to the foot, the glove and his dodges.
There remains the team tournament on Sunday to turn the page on the Obry conflict, absent in Georgia but remaining in the management to supervise the youngest.
