Women’s Foil and Men’s Sabre Teams round out World Champs campaign
The Australian Women’s Foil and Men’s Sabre Teams have hit the piste on the final day of competition at the 2026 World Championships in Hong Kong.
Up first the Women’s Foil Team consisting of Sophia Glasson, Mayuri Muralidharan, Kirsty Xue and Rianne Leung took on the 11th seed at the tournament Korea in what was sure to be a tough encounter.
The Aussies started well with Glasson first on the piste and finishing her period 5-4, before Muralidharan continued the momentum taking the score through to 9-10.
Despite their best efforts and a 5-5 final period from Glasson we just couldn’t match it with the Koreans, going down 28-45 to finish 22nd overall and clearly as a group better for the experience.
In the Men’s Sabre our team of Yoongi Shim, Colin Chen, Alex Brown and Angus Thomas took on the fifth seeded Italian team, and made a bright start of the match.
Shim started and came in from his opening period with a 4-5 result, and with Chen and Brown following we were right in it trailing 10-15 through three periods.
It was a tough ask sticking with the Italians who demonstrated why they are so highly ranked, and coming into the last coupled of periods the gap widened as we trailed 18-35.
Chen and Shim came home strongly with Shim levelling Pietro Torre 5-5 in the last, but we ultimately went down 26-45 to close out our tournament.
The result had us finishing 28th in the 35-team competition.
ROB DI PASQUALE – FOIL COACH
“I thought that the girls did a good warm-up together and I felt that we got a better start today than we did in India, which was good.
“I was really happy with the team spirit and I think that we can only get stronger as we keep going, because it’s a fairly young team, so I think that the future is looking good for us.
“In the next few competitions, I think we are going to get stronger.
“It’s the end of a big campaign. I think that if we work smarter and look at competitions where we can get some inroads into our seeding, this will work favourably for us, because we can fence an easier team in the 32 and perhaps make our path to the 16 a bit easier.”
ALEKSANDRA SHELTON – SABRE NATIONAL HEAD COACH
“It was a good competition for the guys – a really good experience.
“We recognise the gaps that need to be filled and we will not fill all of them at once, but we have a great understanding of which direction we want to go.
“We need to control what we can control, so definitely length of steps, calm the hand, as well as our mental approach.
“We need to change how we are viewing our position and how we are viewing the opponent, so it was definitely good positive data for us.”
To view the results from the event click here: https://shorturl.at/xoezQ