Moellhausen wins in overtime to become Brazil’s first World Fencing Champion

A dramatic gold medal bout that went to a priority
minute has decided the women’s épée and provided the highlight of Day 3 at the
FIE’s World Fencing Championships being held in Budapest, Hungary. 

Brazil’s Nathalie Moellhausen was the
first fencer to be crowned world champion on the first of three nights of
individual finals inside the BOK Sports Hall in Budapest this evening (CET).
Her gold medal match in the women’s épée against China’s Sheng Lin was forced
into a one-minute overtime period before a sudden-death lunge and touch
confirmed victory for the Italian-born Brazilian.

The result is the first time a fencer
representing Brazil has won a medal of any kind at world championship-level,
and Moellhausen fell to her knees on the piste and broke down in tears after
her victory. Her jubilant teammates and family members then mobbed her before
the Brazilian national anthem rang out for the first time ever at an FIE World
Championship not long after. 

 “When you believe in yourself, your dreams can
come true,” she said after her emotional win, revealing that she had nearly
quit fencing the previous year, before coming back to the sport as recently as
January. “I did everything really fast with only one goal after that,” she
explained, ‘to become world champion in Budapest.” 

Locked at 12-12 after the regulation three
periods of three minutes, Moellhausen needed every bit of her experience and
athleticism to defeat Lin, despite her opponent nursing a leg injury sustained
at the Asian Championships last month in Tokyo, where she had been a close
runner-up to her teammate Mingye Zhu.

Before Lin and Moellhausen progressed to
the final bout in Budapest, the pair had been helped by a draw that opened up significantly
when the number one and two-ranked fencers at the start of the competition;
Ana-Maria Popescu of Romania (1) and defending champion Maria Navarria (2), of
Italy, were eliminated in the tables of 16 and 32, respectively.

Prior to tonight’s result, Lin’s best (and
only) individual result at a senior World Championships was last year’s 60^th
place in Wuxi, the same year she won bronze in the team event. Moellhausen won team
gold in 2009 and individual bronze in 2010 in Paris, when Lin was embarking on
her first year on the senior world tour as a prodigious 16-year-old.

World number-one Popescu’s conquerer,
Olena Kryvytska of Ukraine, went as far as the semi-final, where she seemed
confident of victory at 13-9 against Lin, but managed to lose when the
resilient left-hander forced their bout into her first of two priority minutes
of the night; 14-14. The drama in this match was also heightened, Lin believing
she had won before Kryvytska’s blade failed to register and they were forced to
replay the sudden-death point. Luckily for Lin, once the clock was re-started,
she was able to out-touch the Ukrainian one more time.

In the other semi-final, Moellhausen was
put to the test by Hong Kong’s world number three (and now number one) Man Wai
Vivian Kong with scores tied at 8-8 by the end of the second period. The
33-year-old then belied the pair’s difference in world rankings, (Moellhausen
was 21^st at the start of this event) advancing to the final by a
score of 15-11 after the third.  After a
career which has included two Olympics — one as a reserve for Italy in 2012 —
for two different countries, the outpouring of emotion after her victory was
attributed in part to the recent death of Moellhausen’s father, who had played
a huge part in her fencing career.

In the other final to be decided on the
night, the men’s sabre, 22-year-old Korean sensation Sanguk Oh was too good for
local hope and 2017 world champion Andras Szatmari of Hungary. He won their
gold medal match by coming from behind to win 15-12 — his first of possibly
many gold medals. Mojtaba Abedini (Iran) and Lucas Curatoli (Italy) were the
beaten semi-finalists, while the USA’s world number one Eli Dershwitz was one
of Szatmari’s scalps, losing their table of 8 bout by a clear margin, 8-15.

Szatmari’s progress gave the Hungarian
crowd hope after world number three and two-time reigning Olympic champion Aron
Szilagy was eliminated in the table of 32 by Japan’s Yoshida Kento (14-15).

Despite trailing 2-7 in the first period,
and later 5-9, Oh was able to claw his way back into the match during the
second period, before gaining the momentum he needed to win. The victory
follows up his compatriot Kim Jung-hwan’s gold in the same event last year and
installs him as a favourite for Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. 

“It’s an honour to win,” Oh said after the
match, “it’s great to have a Korean fencer win two years in a row.” 

The 2019 World Fencing Championships continue in Budapest until July 23. Check out all results at the FIE’s website here, and follow their YouTube channel for live coverage here.

Moellhausen wins in overtime to become Brazil’s first World Fencing Champion