Fencing Qualification to Summer Olympic Games Paris 2024

maestro · November 27, 2021

1 hour ago, intoronto said:

Yea... at one point the IOC will target fencing for the axe if it doesn't evolve.

Fencing's spot in the olympics is and will be safe, for as long as IOC president is an olympic fencing champion, as he likes calling himself. Which means that there isn't any chance fencing is removed, at least not for the next two or three olympics.

Vektor · November 27, 2021

There's nothing wrong with the team events being the most important for the qualification, the team events are the heart of the sport. Instead of trying to destroy the sport, maybe the lesser nations should actually make an effort to improve in fencing.

The one good solution I can thing of is to only allow the nations to qualify for 4 out of the 6 team events, which would mean that the maximum number of athletes quotas per nation would go down to 14 from the current 18. Similar to how in some sports the nations couldn't qualify in all the events. Even the top nations wouldn't lose much with this change as their two weakest teams most of the time flop anyway at Olympic Games.

phelps · November 27, 2021

4 hours ago, intoronto said:

Yea... at one point the IOC will target fencing for the axe if it doesn't evolve.

if "evolving" means destroying hundred+ years of tradition in a perfectly working (and growing) sport, then it's rather the IOC to be targeted and the idiots in charge to be dismissed before it's too late... :evil:

phelps · November 27, 2021

2 hours ago, Vektor said:

The one good solution I can thing of is to only allow the nations to qualify for 4 out of the 6 team events, which would mean that the maximum number of athletes quotas per nation would go down to 14 from the current 18. Similar to how in some sports the nations couldn't qualify in all the events. Even the top nations wouldn't lose much with this change as their two weakest teams most of the time flop anyway at Olympic Games.

no, please...we already experienced the 4 weapons rotation (and it was a disaster for the sport and for the athletes involved)...

let's not give those idiots any chance to cut anything short, being the number of events nor the Countries' full access to every event...

phelps · November 27, 2021

by the way, mr. Alisher Usmanov has been re-elected as the President of the World Fencing Federation (which is a good thing, as he's strong enough to send stupid ideas back to where they should be)...

https://fie.org/articles/1139

and Milan is going to host the 2023 World Championships (the main Olympic qualifying tournament, as always)... :cheer:

https://www.italy24news.com/News/279473.html

NearPup · November 27, 2021

:ROU and :EST won their only Olympic gold medals in 2016 and 2020 respectively in a fencing team event. There is a lot of depth in fencing events, the reason we see so many American and South Korean medals is that it’s much easier to qualify out of those continents. Qualifying in fencing team events is already half the battle because it isn’t rare for the sixth best team in the world to miss out.

The qualification system is really only “broken” for European fencers, who have to face a truly brutal path to the Olympics.

JoshMartini007 · November 27, 2021

Pretty much, Europe only gets 3 individual quotas on top of what they qualify in the team events, which is typically 3-5 spots. With :FRA :ITA :RUS taking at least an individual quota it doesn't leave a lot of room for the other nations.

Dunadan · November 27, 2021

In men's epee- there are too few quotas, too many competitive athletes and teams (probably at least 20 teams could challenge for medals on a good day). Reducing the number of teams there is even more ridiculous. But for the rest, which is still 10 out of 12 events...

The Swedish claim that "many world class fencers failed to qualify with this system and this is bad" and then proceed to suggest a system where way more world class fencers would be cut. Almost all top fencers who failed to qualify this time - which is the only time with a full programme of 12 events- did so because of compatriots ahead of them in the ranking, how many countries with a "world class fencer" in an event failed to qualify ? Let's see, looking at the ranking at end of the OQR.

W Foil: no country with a top 30 fencer failed to qualify

M Foil: the only non qualified with a top 30 fencers was POL (Siess #21)

W Epee: GER had Ndolo at #25

M Sabre: no country with a top 30 failed to qualify

W Sabre: ROU had Pascu #16, ESP at #24.

An average of 1 country with a top 30 fencer non qualifying in that event (notice: all of them European) is not that bad.

Secondly: what would change if the qualification system really had as priority the individual qualification, and not giving free spots for diversity's sake * ? Let's give a spot to the top 34 fencers (max. 3 per country) and consider a team qualified only if they have 3 fencers qualified, and see how many spots the so called "top teams" would lose: none, instead they would have taken more spots- FRA in place of HKG in W epee, KOR instead of HKG in M foil and so on. 7-8 teams per event would qualify in this case, with some other countries qualifying 2 individuals.

* Like in the Swedish simulation, where plenty of Africans who barely scored 1 point in world cups would qualify, because yeah more countries.