On Monday, July 29, Olga Kharlan brought Ukraine its first medal at 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. She won bronze in the women’s individual competition fencing on sabers.
Paris 2024 | Fencing: What you need to know about the tournament
Harlan’s fifth medal in her fifth Olympics
For Olga Kharlan, the Olympic Games in Paris were already the fifth in her career. She made her debut at the 2008 Games in Beijing at the age of 17, and it was there that she won her only Olympic gold medal to date. This happened in the team sabre tournament, in the final match of which against the Chinese team, it was young Kharlan who made a very important contribution to her team’s victory, in one of the fights she struck her opponent eight times in a row.
After that, she had two Olympic bronze medals in individual competitions in London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 (at the Games in Brazil – along with silver in the team tournament), and only from the 2020 Games in Tokyo did Harlan return without a medal. “What happened today can hardly be called fencing. Such things happen. It is a great pity that today was exactly such a day,” Olga admitted after her painful defeat in the first duel of the individual competition in the capital of Japan. Her motivation before the current Olympic tournament in Paris was even stronger.
Today, Olga Kharlan played all her fights, right up to the quarterfinals, very confidently, not allowing her opponent to land even ten blows in any of them. Being the fifth seed, she missed the 1/32 final round. In her first fight, Kharlan outplayed Shinomi Fukushima from Japan – 15:9, in the 1/8 finals – representing Azerbaijan Annu Bashta (15:6), and in the quarterfinals – the Hungarian Anna Marton (15:7). The semi-final match against the Frenchwoman was unsuccessful for Harlan Sary Balzerin the middle of which she allowed her opponent to land several blows in a row, gave the initiative to her opponent and ultimately lost – 7:15.
After this, the fate of Olga Kharlan’s next Olympic medal was decided in a “bronze fight” against Sebin Choi from the Republic of Korea. And in this fight, the Ukrainian sabre fencer had to show a truly champion character. During the fight, she was almost hopelessly behind in the score – 5:11, but was able to return to the fight and bring the score to 14:14. In a fast-paced sabre fight, this meant that the fate of the Olympic medal would be decided in literally a few moments – one fencing phrase. And these moments worked out in favor of Olga Kharlan, who again rose to the Olympic podium – 16 years after she first did so in Beijing-2008.
2024 Olympic Fencing Tournament Schedule
The fencing tournament will be held at the 2024 Games from July 27 to August 4.
See the competition schedule Here
