Borel and Belajeva secure FIE epee gold medals in Doha

Borel beat Spain’s Yulen Pereira to win the men’s epee competition while Belajeva overcame the challenge of Ukraine’s Kseniya Pantelyeyava to claim the top prize in the women’s epee.

The Doha Grand Prix is the first of nine high level events scheduled to be spread across three continents over the first half of 2019. Three events are each to be held in Europe, the Americas and in Asia; the last being staged in Moscow, Russia from 24 to 26 May.

In the men’s competition of this first event in the Qatari capital, Borel showed why he is the reigning world champion with a convincing performance throughout and laid down a marker for the year ahead.

Having beaten Kazakhstan’s Ruslan Kurbanov (15-6) and Russia’s Georgiy Bruev (15-10) at the last 64 and 32 stages respectively, further victories over another Russian, Nikita Glazkov (15-9) in the last 16 and then Israel’s Ido Harper (15-12) in the quarter-finals set up a meeting with USA’s Jacob Hoyle. Here Borel stepped up a level over the American winning 15-10 to book his gold medal match decider with Pereira.

It proved to be something of a one-way contest as the Spaniard proved no match for Borel who went on to win the Final and gold medal by a comfortable 15-4 margin.

Pereira’s progress to the Final had seen him take some notable scalps, overcoming world number four Dmitriy Alexanin of Kazakhstan 15-11 in the last 16 stage and world number two Bogdan Nikishin 15-9 in the semi-finals.

The women’s epee competition proved to be a much closer affair with Estonia’s Julia Belajeva eventually claiming the gold medal.

The 26 year old, ranked nine in the world, was made to work hard all the way through the tournament, which started with victories over Germany’s Alexandra Ndolo (15-13) and Italy’s Nicol Foietta (13-9) at the last 64 and 32 stages.

A 15-12 success over world number one Navarria of Italy in the last 16 opened the competition wide open, ahead of victory against Switzerland’s Pauline Brunner (15-10) in the quarter-finals.

Korea’s Hyojung Jung was the opponent in the semi-final however she proved no match for Belajeva who progressed to the gold medal match on the back of a convincing 15-6 win.

That brought a decider with Ukranian Pantelyeyava and it was the Estonian who eventually prevailed 15-11 to take the title and gold medal.

The next FIE Grand Prix of the 2019 series is the first foray into Europe with the visit to the Italian city of Turin for the men’s and women’s foil competitions over 8 to 10 February.