Sabre, Team, Men

South Korea were only seeded sixth for the London Olympic team sabre tournament because of poor performances in previous team competitions. This seemed to be a false position as the Koreans had 3 of the top 11 seeds in the individual event competing as part of their team. Korea duly delivered the only shock of the opening round when, despite the best efforts of world ranked #1 Nicolas Limbach, they defeated Germany.

A bigger shock came in the semi-finals when the Koreans upset Italy largely through the effort of their top man, Gu Bon-Gil. They would have expected to face World Champions Russia in the final but this was not to be as the Russians fell in a close and exciting contest to the lower ranked Romanians.

The gold medal contest was also expected to be a close fought affair but instead turned into the most one sided match of the whole event. Korea had early successes and continued to build their lead throughout the match. They went on to win a conclusive 45-26 victory over the European opponents. This was the first time an Asian nation had won an Olympic men’s team title in fencing. Italy rebounded from their defeat against Korea to beat Russia for bronze despite being punished for overenthusiastic celebrations at one point in the contest.