Three Filipino fencers start their quest for a Tokyo Olympic spot as action unfolds in the Asia-Oceania Olympic Qualifying Tournament on Sunday, April 25, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Samantha Catantan, the first Filipino fencer to win a gold medal during the 2019 Under-23 Asian Championship, will lead the campaign when she sees action in the women's foil event.
Catantan starts her bid at 11 a.m. (2 p.m. Manila Time).
Prior to that, CJ Concepcion will kick things off for the national team when he competes in the men’s sabre at 9 a.m., while Noelito Jose represents the country in the men’s epee at 1 p.m.
Among the Filipino fencers, Jose carries the most experience in OQT action since he competed in a similar event where he made it to the round-of-32 back in 2016 in Wuxi, China.
“I shared with them (teammates) the experience I had in the OQT. I told them it’s tough, because it’s one participant/weapon per country, and you’ll be facing the top fencer from other countries,” said Jose, a bronze medalist in the Southeast Asian Games here two years ago.
Aside from her gold medal performance during the Under-23 continental meet, the 19-year-old Catantan is coming fresh from a remarkable stint last month in the US NCAA Fencing Championship in Pennsylvania.
As a freshman at Penn State University, Catantan – the first homegrown Filipino to play for a Division 1 school in the US NCAA – was unbeaten in pool play with a 20-0 record that gave her the No. 1 seed going to the Final Four stage.
Although she lost to teammate Lodovica Bicego of Italy in the semifinal, Catantan was named to the All-American selection. She recently competed in the Cadet-Junior World Championship in Cairo.
Concepcion, on the other hand, is also expected to contend in this OQT similar to when he battled in the final round of the 2019 SEA Games where he eventually settled with a silver medal.
Fencing’s national coach Amat Canlas said the fencers were able to practice Friday night after arriving early in the morning. They were in an isolation area for a few hours as they awaited their swab test results.
“We’re all good, especially our fencers. We all have negative results, so we had several hours of practice,” said Canlas, who took over as head coach of the fencing national team in 2016.
“Now here we are, we’re hoping for the best in our campaign. For me, all of our fencers have legitimate shot at qualifying in the Tokyo Olympics because they all prepared and trained hard for this OQT.”
SEA Games gold medalists Jylyn Nicanor and Hanniel Abella will see action on Monday as they represent the country in women’s sabre and epee. Nathaniel Perez will play in the men's foil.
Only the best fencer for each weapon and division will clinch the remaining spots in the Tokyo Olympics since other slots have been taken via world ranking and OQTs in other continents.
All six will try to end a long drought, and that is for a Filipino fencer to advance in the Tokyo Olympics, or since Walter Torres competed in the men’s foil individual event during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.