The Olympic women’s team epee competition started the series of team fencing events at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a bang. With the crowd on the edge of their seats, France took on longtime fencing rival Italy in a duel for the gold medal, and Poland won its first medal in women’s team epee in a dramatic bronze medal match.
Italian Rossella Fiamingo received the French-Italian rematch she was looking for earlier in the week when Italy won its semifinal match 45-24 to move on to face France, which won 45-39 in a tighter semifinal against Poland.
“This is our moment to get revenge,” Fiamingo said about the opportunity to reclaim gold after France’s Marie-Florence Candassamy won the women’s individual epee event at the 2023 World Fencing Championships. “An Italian can win on French territory. It is our rematch.”
France led Italy throughout the match until Italy's Mara Navarria tied it at 23-23 in the eighth bout against French Alexandra Louis-Marie. Navarria was able to get the lead 24-23 for Italy before the clock ran out and it was up to anchors Auriane Mallo of France and Alberta Santuccio of Italy to conclude the match.
The crowd was thunderous as Mallo and Santuccio tied, earned leads, and tied several more times.
In the last 30 seconds of the final bout, Mallo and Santuccio each earned additional points to level the match once more. In the sudden-death priority minute, Santuccio lunged to earn the winning touch and claim Italy’s sweet revenge.
Fiamingo was right: Italians can win on French territory.
Earlier, Poland took on China in the bronze medal match.
The first bout with Poland’s Aleksandra Jarecka and Tokyo gold medalist Sun Yiwen of China got off to a slow start, with a penalty given to both fencers for a minute of passivity. The countries exchanged slight leads through the end of the sixth bout until they tied 20-20 in the seventh bout with Polish Martyna Swatowska and China’s Xu Nuo.
The tie continued until the final bout between Jarecka and China’s Yu Sihan in which a graphics system error accidentally displayed an extra point for Poland after the countries earned a double point in the last 30 seconds. The error was not discovered by the referee until Yu scored what appeared to be a match-tying point in the last five seconds. In reality, China had taken the lead over Poland.
Then it was up to Jarecka to tie the match in the last four seconds, and she delivered. Jarecka and Yu went into a sudden-death tiebreaker round in which Jarecka was successful and Poland claimed the bronze medal.
Americans Anne Cebula, Hadley Husisian, Margherita Guzzi Vincenti, and Katharine Holmes finished seventh.
Women's team epee medalists
🥇Italy (Alberta Santuccio, Giulia Rizzi, Rossella Fiamingo, Mara Navarria)
🥈France (Marie-Florence Candassamy, Auriane Mallo, Coraline Vitalis, Louis-Marie Alexandra)
🥉Poland (Aleksandra Jarecka, Martyna Swatowska, Renata Knapik-Miazga)