The Airport Hotel Okecie was the venue once again for the Warsaw World Cup, with the delightful coffee shop and all the hand made cakes and sweets in the hotel foyer.
Day one saw Piers fencing sabre. He was ranked 11 after poules, and in the L32 fenced Gavrilenkov, 15-7, then L16 Chen 15-11, then in the L8 he beat Dronov 15-13. Piers then lost to Osvath 15-10 in the semi final. On Day two Justine Moore surprised everyone by winning all her poule matches in the Cat B foil, to finish ranked 1. Unfortunately she couldn’t continue the momentum into the DE’s. Dimitri had a poor foil poule by his standards, and was ranked 16 in the tableau of 32. He ignored his ranking and beat Castro 15-3. In the L16 he beat Cima 15-7, and in the L8 he beat Kamalov 15-8. He then swept aside Feng in the semi final 15-9 and fenced Daoliang Hu in the final, beating him 15-10. On Day 3 Piers and Dimitri both fenced epee. Dimitri was ranked 6 in the tableau of 32 and beat Alderete 15-9.
In the L16 he beat Datsko 15-8, in the L8 he beat Naumenko 15-8, and in the semi final he beat Hu 15-10 and faced Ali Amar in the final. It was a close match with Ali Amar taking the gold, 15-14. In the L32 Piers beat Sim 15-6. L16 he beat Noble 15-4. L8 Piers beat Lambertini 15-10. In the Semi finals Piers lost to Sun 15-14.
There were several other good performances. Josh Waddell had a battle royal in his epee DE with Treter of Poland, eventually winning 15-14. Mat Campbell-Hill had a similar battle on the adjacent piste against Greek showman, Pylarinos. The match produced the usual drama and after extra time Mat won 7-4.
In the foil team event Josh decided to entertain everyone with his rendition of Shakira! Shakira! as a means of inspiring his team mates. I think it worked. In the first match GB ranked 9 faced Japan and won comfortably 45-19. The quarter final was against Russia, who proved too strong and won 45-34. The next match was with France. Which GB won with aplomb 45-37. In the last match GB fenced Ukraine and won 45-42 to finish 5th.
This post was originally published on the British Disability Fencing website and has been replicated on the BF site, after BDF transferred responsibilities to BF in April 2022.
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