CHIBA,South Korea claimed bronze in the women’s sabre team fencing event on Saturday for its fourth medal from the sport at the Tokyo Olympics.
The team of Kim Ji-yeon, Yoon Ji-su and Seo Ji-yeon defeated Italy 45-42 in the bronze medal match at Makuhari Messe Hall B in Chiba, east of Tokyo. South Korea rallied from a 25-15 deficit for the dramatic win.
This is South Korea’s first medal in the women’s sabre team event, which made its Olympic debut in 2008.
This concludes South Korea’s fencing campaign at these Olympic Games. South Korea won’t have a team in the men’s foil team event scheduled for Sunday.
The men’s sabre team won gold on Wednesday, a day after the women’s epee team won silver. The male sabre fencer Kim Jung-hwan won an individual bronze medal last Saturday.
South Korea had a gold and a bronze at the 2016 Olympics.
A team match is made up of nine individual bouts fought by three fencers. Each member of a team faces each member of the other team once, and teams can use a substitute.
A head-to-head bout is three minutes long, but it ends when one team’s score reaches a multiple of five.
The goal is to get to 45 points first or to have more points than the opposition by the end of the ninth bout.
South Korea stayed close through the first three bouts but went down 20-14 after Irene Vecchi beat Seo 5-1 in the fourth bout.
Italy extended its lead to 25-15 thanks to Michela Battiston’s 5-1 win over Kim in the fifth bout.
Yoon made the match more interesting by outscoring Rossella Gregorio 11-5 in the next bout, and the overall score was now 30-26 for Italy.
Seo then gave South Korea a 35-33 lead by winning her bout against Battiston 9-3.
South Korea nursed a 40-38 lead going into the final bout. Kim, the 2012 individual sabre gold medalist, got the last five points that South Korea needed for the bronze.
The improbable victory ensured that South Korea will go home with a medal in every team event in which it participated: the men’s and women’s sabre and the men’s and women’s epee.
Source: Yonhap News Agency.