No margin for error: Szilagyi (HUN) v Montano (ITA)

This is a classy way to secure a World Championship medal. From the final bout in the Italy v Hungary quarterfinal in the men’s sabre teams at Kazan, between Aldo Montano and Aron Szilagyi:

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Montano actually did pretty well in that bout, pulling off a 7/5 run with a string of almost identical stop hits. It’s a high risk maneuver, but Szilagyi seems to be extremely vulnerable to it. Here’s the first one, just to give the flavour. My advice to anyone likely to fence Szilagyi sometime soon would be to study closely.

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The full match has been posted on our YouTube channel. The Hungarians play a very nice defensive game, setting up a ton of fall-shorts off the line. Seriously, I lost count. There’s the usual brutal 4m wrestling matches whenever Diego Occhiuzzi is up, but the rest of it is pretty clean.

There was lovely fencing here, and lovely fencing in the Bronze match against Russia. What happened in the semi against Korea, though, was something else entirely. We’ll take a look at it tomorrow.


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