Two of the six Filipino fencers failed on their bid to earn Tokyo Olympics slots as Samantha Catantan and CJ Concepcion suffered separate defeats in the knockout stage of their respective events in the Asia-Oceania Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) Sunday night, April 25, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Catantan came short of moving to the final round after a 15-10 setback to top seed Yana Alborova of the host nation in their semifinal clash.
Advancing to the finals, the 27-year-old Alborova bowed to Singapore's Amita Berthier, 15-14, as the latter also earned the spot in Tokyo.
Berthier, the gold medalist during 2019 Southeast Asian Games here, earlier downed Lebanon’s Mona Shaito, 15-4, in the semifinals.
Despite the setback, Catantan took the bronze medal tied with Shaito, becoming the first Filipino in 17 years to get a medal since Wally Mendoza settled with a silver medal in the OQT for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The 19-year-old Catantan, a freshman at Penn State University, finished the pool play with a 5-1 record, which included a 5-3 triumph against her SEA Games rival Berthier – a member of Notre Dame fencing team.
The fourth seeded Catantan earned a bye in the round-of-16 and won 10-6 over No. 5 Hsin Cheng of Taipei in the quarterfinal.
This is the fourth time in four months that Catantan and Berthier played against each other – the last one was last month in the pool stage of the US NCAA Fencing Championship in Pennsylvania.
As for Concepcion, he lost to No. 7 Alexandre Douglas of Australia 15-9 in their round-of-16 match in men's epee. Concepcion finished the tournament 10th overall out of 14 participants.
Uzbekistan’s Sherzod Mamutov claimed the Tokyo Olympic berth by beating Ho Tin Low of Hong Kong in the final 15-7.
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.
SEA Games gold medalist Jylyn Nicanor and Noelito Jose also failed on their respective bids in this OQT.
Jose suffered a painful 15-14 setback Mohsin Abbas of Iraq in the final 16 of men’s epee.
In Monday’s action, Nicanor fell short on getting into the semifinal round following a 15-12 decision to Hong Kong’s Lim Wai Lam – a fencer she edged during pool play – in the quarterfinal of women’s saber.
Still being played as of posting time are men’s foil and women’s epee with Filipino fencers Nathaniel Perez and Hanniel Abella still in the hunt for a spot in this year’s Tokyo Olympics.