Fencing W’Cup: Saudi, Egypt shine in Lagos

Fencers from Egypt and Saudi Arabia dominated the rankings at the 2024 Men’s Junior Epee Fencing World Cup, winning the top prizes at the two-day tournament which was hosted by Nigeria between December 14 and 15, The PUNCH reports.

Nigeria played host to seven other countries with 39 fencers going head-to-head for the medals and world rankings at the prestigious Charterhouse Lagos, becoming the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to host a Fencing World Cup.

At the end of the two-day championship, Egypt won the team event after beating Greece in the final. Saudi Arabia settled for bronze.

Despite facing a tough preliminary group which had Egypt, Nigeria managed to finish seventh in the team event.

Egypt’s Shamel Youssef also topped the singles event, beating Saudi Arabia’s Abed Hassan to the gold while Egyptian duo Elsayed Mahmoud and Osama Eslam shared the bronze.

The highest-ranked Nigerian fencer in the singles event was Ige Olumuyiwa – in No.27 – who was edged out in the round of 32 by Greece’s Theodoropoulos Panagiotis.

Fashola Oluwashemilore, who was beaten by eventual winner Shamel, was ranked 31st while former African cadet and national junior champion, Wisdom Okanlawon, finished in the 32nd position.

President of the Nigeria Fencing Federation, Adeyinka Samuel, said hosting the tournament was a win for Nigeria, despite the difficulties.

“We are grateful that we can host such a tournament. It has been challenging to secure and host it primarily in the area of finance,” Samuel said.

“Nigerian fencers have also been able to fence their hearts out and for us, we want to be able to host more competitions and improve our capacity in terms and that is why we are going into partnerships with Italian and British fencing. Once we can do that, we will be ready to host bigger tournaments and we can use that to spread fencing across Nigeria.”