Italy wins gold in women’s team epee fencing to disappoint a passionate French crowd again

Italy’s Alberta Santuccio (second right) celebrates with her teammates Rossella Fiamingo, Giulia Rizzi and Mara Navarria after winning the women’s team Epee final match against France

The fans at fencing are among the loudest and most passionate at the Paris Olympics, especially when France is challenging for a gold medal. They usually leave disappointed.

Italy overcame a passionate “Marseillaise”-singing crowd at the Grand Palais to hand France its fourth fencing silver medal of the Games in the women’s team epee yesterday [Macau time].

Alberta Santuccio got the winning touch for Italy in overtime against France’s Auriane Mallo-Breton to complete a hard-fought 30-29 win for gold. It was the second time that Mallo-Breton lost a Paris Olympic final by a single point after a 13-12 loss to Hong Kong’s Vivian Kong Man Wai in the individual epee Saturday.

French fencers are 0-3 in finals against non-French opponents at the 2024 Olympics, with those losses coming in epee events. The host nation’s only gold came when Manon Apithy-Brunet beat her teammate Sara Balzer in the women’s saber final on Monday.

“If you look at the (epee) finals, of course we seem to be losing, but we’re in the finals all the same,” Mallo-Breton said through an interpreter. “I think that in the teams, there are possibilities to go and get some wonderful medals, and we hope that the other (French) teams will be able to go and do that, so we’re going to be supporting them.”

Team fencing involves squad members fencing one-on-one in a rotating sequence that means everyone gets to face each opponent once. Despite the overtime loss, Mallo-Breton was still France’s standout in the final with a combined record of 14-10 against all opponents.

Italy has one gold, one silver and one bronze medal so far in fencing. Five more team events remain.

Polish fencer Aleksandra Jarecka was shaking on the floor with emotion after winning her team bronze. Jarecka tied the score with less than three seconds to go and then won the tiebreaker point for a 32-31 overtime win against China.

Just before that was an unexpected twist when an apparent glitch with the scoring system seemed to give Poland an extra point in the last minute, only to take it away. It prompted the referee to study video of recent points in a bid to clear up exactly what the state of play was for the final seconds. JAMES ELLINGWORTH, PARIS, MDT/AP