Fencing EFC European Olympic Qualifier 2024 Road to Paris 2024

Makedonas · April 28

1 hour ago, Epic Failure said:

As much as the parochial side of me is sad to see Stutchbury miss out, she had her shot and her ranking puts her roughly on the borderline anyway.

I feel more for Carlos Llavador from Spain in the men's foil. He's ranked 12th.

He's looking likely to miss out. But in the individual event, we'll see 3 Polish fencers and 3 Canadians, none of whom are within the top 30 in the rankings. Nothing against any of those athletes, it's just a weird system.

It just seems somewhat perverse that *multiple* lower ranked athletes get to take part in the individual because they are just good enough to get a quota in another event, whereas an individual clearly more talented misses out.

Sad, but at least he had the chance at the European qualification tournament. The same might happen with Ilieva in a few hours, hopefully not, we will see.

Georgiadou is 5th (!!!) in the women's sabre, won medals at the World Championships in both 2022 and 2023, won many other medals during that time, but doesn't get to qualify via ranking even though she is the second-highest ranked European (because another Greek is ranked higher, so someone from another country who is ranked below Georgiadou gets the quota instead), and on top of that Georgiadou doesn't get to compete in the European qualification tournament because apparently it's fine for some countries to have 3 fencers in the individual event but God forbid Greece sends two fencers to Paris in the same weapon it would be "bad for the development of the sport" and "decreases diversity" as one other NOC would miss out in the event, because apparently Greece is so important in fencing these days that we must give up one of our spots to another country so they can also be represented. :rolleyes:

I don't want to seem insensitive (I fully support Ukraine) and I know these are different situations, but they were able to magically add another quota and give Kharlan a wildcard here, so I guess the athlete quotas are only strict when they want them to be?

Epic Failure · April 28

11 minutes ago, Makedonas said:

Sad, but at least he had the chance at the European qualification tournament. The same might happen with Ilieva in a few hours, hopefully not, we will see.

Georgiadou is 5th (!!!) in the women's sabre, won medals at the World Championships in both 2022 and 2023, won many other medals during that time, but doesn't get to qualify via ranking even though she is the second-highest ranked European (because another Greek is ranked higher, so someone from another country who is ranked below Georgiadou gets the quota instead), and on top of that Georgiadou doesn't get to compete in the European qualification tournament because apparently it's fine for some countries to have 3 fencers in the individual event but God forbid Greece sends two fencers to Paris in the same weapon it would be "bad for the development of the sport" and "decreases diversity" as one other NOC would miss out in the event, because apparently Greece is so important in fencing these days that we must give up one of our spots to another country so they can also be represented.

I don't want to seem insensitive (I fully support Ukraine) and I know these are different situations, but they were able to magically add another quota and give Kharlan a wildcard here, so I guess the athlete quotas are only strict when they want them to be?

I hadn't mentioned either Ilieva - because she still had tomorrow - or Georgiadou because you had already covered how ridiculous her situation is already, that was all. All 3 are currently examples of a system that doesn't seem to be helping the games be the best they can be.

The only 'consolation' I can find is that it isn't just fencing that has a stupid qualification system. There's other athletes in other sports who get equally screwed by the weird whims of the IOC quotas! So the fencers are in good company at least!

Jur · April 28

The only changes I would do to the Fencing qualification is taking out the "continent" rules in the ranking quotas. The eigth best teams qualify, and then the 6th best in world ranking (max 1 per country). And then 4 quotas in the continent qualification event. And that's would be it.

Edited April 28 by Jur

pacowong1223 · April 28

The team event qualification definitely need a change

:HKG is having 6th in men's foil team and Ryan Choi is ranked 18th in individual but they still have only one spot in men's foil (taken by Ka Long Cheung, who is ranked 6th)

But if the continental rule doesn't exist, we probably can take more quotas.

pacowong1223 · April 28

And they even don't have a chance to fight for another quotas in the Continental Olympic Qualifier given their high ranking (same as the Greek F sabre cases)