ANTONIO Manuel and Sophia Catantan won gold medals in the 1st Hefeng National Junior Fencing Championships on Sunday at the New Taipei Municipal Linkou Senior High School in New Taipei City in Taiwan.
The two Filipinos, part of a team of over 40 athletes from Canlas Fencing, won in dramatic fashion as the club finished the two-day meet with a haul of two gold medals, a silver and eight bronze medals.
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After suffering a 13-15 setback to Lv Kechen of Taiwan in the semifinals of the Under-15 women’s individual foil, the 13-year-old Catantan bounced back with a 15-4 victory over Taiwan’s Liu Zhiyu in the final of the U-17 category.
The 14-year-old Manuel, an incoming Grade 10 student of Paref Northfield also rebounded from a silver medal finish in U-17 as he bagged gold in U-15 – overcoming cramps late in the bout – with a come-from-behind 15-11 win against Yang Bingyan of Taiwan.
Victoria Ebdane bagged bronze in the U-15 foil, while also earning bronze medals were Jodie Tan in U-13 and Yuna Canlas in U-11, Medivh Boy in U-17, Nicol Canlas in U-13 and Villacin sisters Alyssa in U-19 and Akirra in U-7 mixed of sabre.
Willa Galvez, 11, whose international participation was made possible by Converge, Nickel Asia Corporation, San Miguel Corporation, Rain or Shine and NLEX, went undefeated 4-0 in the first round pools to get a bye as the No. 4 seed in direct elimination.
She lost 15-3 against 13-year-old eventual champion Zhou Bingyi of Taiwan in U-13 category and ended up ninth overall, still considered by CF co-founder Amat Canlas an improvement similar to Hagia del Castillo, who competed here two months ago and lost in the first round DE in U-11 but cracked the Top 8 in the same division this time.
“It’s a good experience for Filipino fencers because they were able to fight against tough and quality fencers here. Aside from local fencers here, there were also participants from Korea and Malaysia,” said Canlas, a former national team head coach who co-founded CF with Sally Aramburo.
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