Roberts Creek fencer Fynn Fafard finished the Canadian fencing season with a gold medal at the January Canada Cup in U17 Epée, holding onto his No. 1 ranking in Canada. Fynn then added a bronze medal in U20 Epée and finished a solid fifth in Senior Men’s Epée.
These results qualified him for the Pan Am Championships in Cuba this week and the World Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria beginning on April 3. Fynn will be representing Canada in both the U17 age group and U20 at both tournaments. The results also earned him an invitation to the recent Senior Men’s World Cup in Richmond, where he fenced against some of the best senior fencers in the world.
The field included many Olympic and World Champions, and there would be no easy matches.
Fynn won three of his six poule matches and qualified, for the first time in his young career, for the elimination round in a Senior Men’s World Cup.
His first win was over Czech Republic fencer Richard Pokorny who, two days later, anchored the Czech team to the World Cup gold medal in the team event.
Fynn’s next win was against French fencer Matias Biabiany, who is ranked 45th in the world.
In his final poule match, Fynn faced Kim Sangmim from another fencing powerhouse nation, South Korea. This match was a must win if Fynn was to be guaranteed advancement to the next round.
Sangmim took an early 3-1 lead before Fynn clawed back to level the score; Sangmim scored again with 30 seconds to go to take a 4-3 lead before Fynn tied it again with nine seconds to spare to force overtime and completed his third and final win of the day.
– Submitted
