Hot off of winning Canada’s first-ever Olympic medal in Paris this summer, Eleanor Harvey coasted to a bronze medal in a field of 179 athletes at the Women’s Foil World Cup in Tunisia on Saturday. With victories over Aurora Grandis (Italy), Yunjia Zhang (Canada), Elena Tangherlini (Italy) Kata Kondricz (Hungary), Eleanor finally fell to the #2 ranked Martina Favaretto (Italy).
Coach Alex Martin was impressed “to see that Eleanor handled the pressure of coming off the Olympics so well.”
When asked about her victory Eleanor said, “it’s so cool that we won medals in 2 different weapons on the same day, I don’t know if that’s ever happened before!”
That “same day” medal for Canadian fencing was thanks to Dylan French, competing on the other side of the world in the Men’s Epee Vancouver World Cup, finishing 3rd out of 216 fencers. Ranked 118th in the world, Dylan French mastered “the art of the upset” on Saturday, beating Japan’s 2021 Olympic Gold medallist, Kazuyasu Minobe in sudden-death overtime in his first match. Dylan rolled on, upsetting the 22nd seed, Conrad Kongstad (Denmark), Italy’s #32 seed Giulio Gaetani and then Justin Yoo (USA) in another sudden-death overtime match. He finally fell to the eventual gold medallist, Yuval Shalom Freilich (Israel).
The Women’s Epee team qualified 5 athletes for the second day of individual competition (a new Canadian record) with Angel Xiao placing 22nd out of 170 athletes. The women’s team lost in overtime to the eventual silver medallists from Ukraine in their first match, but went on to win three other matches, including a solid victory over the USA, placing ninth overall.
The Olympics may be barely finished but the new quadrennial leading to LA 2028 has begun, and Team Canada is young, hungry, scrappy and talented.
Media contact:
David Howes
Executive Director
ed@fencing.ca