Following on from Jaimie Cook’s maiden individual gold medal on Saturday, Great Britain made the podium again yesterday in the team event, taking bronze at the last Junior World Cup of the season.
The line-up of Joe Donaghue, Maxwell Jones, Oliver Strange and Nye Ulferts-Kilpatrick were seeded sixth in a field of twelve. They beat Sweden 45-35 and Poland 45-41 to make the semi-finals where they faced second seeds France.
The French team had already taken the gold medal in Lezno, silver in Bangkok and two bronze medals in Udine and Aix-en-Provence and were wary of the close semi-final match they had with the British team in the semi-finals in Bangkok – going through 45-43 on that occasion. The first third of the match was tight but the French led 15-14 before pulling away in the middle to lead 30-21. They went on to make the gold medal match 45-30 as Great Britain went into the play-off for bronze with Uzbekistan.
Another tight match saw Great Britain lead 15-14 after three legs but they went on to outscore the Uzbek team 15-11 in the middle to lead 30-25. A strong eighth leg from Ulferts-Kilpatrick opened that lead up to 40-30 and Donaghue completed the medal-winning performance to close out the match 45-38.
Top seeds Italy beat France to the gold, winning the final 45-38.
The full results are available here.
Joe, Maxwell, Oliver and Nye are young athletes on the British Fencing Athlete Development Programme, funded by Sport England. More information about ADP camps, programmes and updates can be found here.
The Cadet and Junior European Championships begin on Tuesday in Tallin, Estonia and you can follow the live results from the official website.
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