The first men’s sabre World Cup for 2015 was in Padua over the weekend. A number of interesting things happened, but the main theme is that the kids these days just ain’t go no respect for their elders.
I’ll be looking at them one at a time over the next few days as I get a chance to go through the videos. First up, I think we’d better get the really big news of the comp out of the way, and that’s Aldo Montano’s rockin’ topkot.
The other substantive news was that Kamil Ibragimov absolutely smashed it. The lightning quick 21-year old has been a fencer I’ve been keeping an eye on for the last year, and weirdly enough I was actually going to post him this week in my Fencers-I-Want-To-See-More-Of series. We got to see an awful lot of him on the weekend, and it was pretty great.
Ibragimov taking gold at a world cup is cool and possibly a little unexpected, at least this soon, but he’s got a pretty solidly established rep. What was not expected was that a 19-year old rookie, fresh out of high school with zero international comp experience at any level, would be on the podium with him. But that’s what happened.
Oh Sanguk entered the comp seeded 999. The first sign of trouble was when he smashed up the poules, seeding second behind Aliaksandr Buikevich. He then preceeded to cut a swathe through the competition. First came Szatmari:
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Then he drew Montano. For a while, it looked like nature was going to take its course and the score blew out to 11-6 Montano’s way. Then he began to tire, and Oh did not show mercy.
[gfycat data_id=”EthicalGenuineBlowfish”]
It’s like someone thought “Hey, Gu Bongil’s advance lunge is pretty good. But wouldn’t it be better if he was 7 feet tall?”
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By the last point they had both fallen several times and were both looking a little delicate, but the young Korean brought it home:
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The live stream of the 64 to 8 is here, with Oh v Montano from 1:36:00 in. I’ve already given away the ending, but it’s worth a look anyway.
The youth of today, man.
More to follow!