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No one could imagine that all ten fencers who are among the world top 32 ones did not reach even semi-finals of men's individual epee competition at the 21st World University Games.
In the second round of the competition at Beijing Shijingshan Gymnasium, the world No. 1 fencer Jorg Fiedler of Germany was defeated by his teammate seventh-ranked Daniel Strigel, who was also frustrated by the 19-year-old Maksym Khvorost of Ukraine later.
Christoph Marik of Austria, who is ranked eighth by the International Fencing Federation, 14th-ranked Attila Fekete of Hungary, 17th Marcel Fischer of Switzerland, 20th Erik Boisse of France, Fabian Schmidt of Germany, 26th Benoit Janvier of France, 29th Francesco Martinelli of Italy and 32nd Dmitro Karyuchenko of Ukraine all stopped their run before the semi-finals.
After Matthieu Denis, a veteran of gold medalist in men's team epee at the 20th Universiade 1999 in Palma De Mallorca of Spain, got the final victory over Ukrainian fencer Maksym Khvorost 15-10, his teammates threw the gold medalist into the air.
The French jubilated for their country's first gold at the universiade in Beijing.
Denis, who is only ranked the 93rd at present, successively overcame Xiao Jian from China, Basil Hoffmann from Switzerland and his teammate Janvier.
"I'm extremely delightful to win the first gold medal for my France," said Denis, who is a junior majoring in sports administration at University of Paris.
"It's more difficult for me to obtain the individual title than the team one two years ago," the 24-year-old French fencer said.
He said he hopes to win the team epee gold for France on August 29.
Ukrainian swordsman Khvorost, who is now ranked 221st in the world, remained nobody before the individual epee final. He was a member of the Ukrainian team who got the title of the European Fencing Championship in 2001.
"Although having a pity on loss of the final match," Khvorost said, "the silver brings me happiness."
When foreign young fencers impeded well-known ones' march forward, four Chinese athletes did not play the role of giant killers. They could hardly step into the top 16.
"Our fencers should learn much more from their foreign counterparts in men's individual epee fencing," said Zhao Lizhong, coach of China's national team.
"I hope they could reach the quarter-finals of the team epee competition," Zhao said.
(People's Daily 08/26/2001)
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