The four-day World Foil Championship will be held in Egypt towards the end of this month.

The tournament will be held at ‘The Club’ club in the Administrative City in Cairo from 23 to 26 February.

“We decided to host this year’s World Cup in the Administrative City for several reasons,” Abdel-Moneim Al-Husseini, president of the Egyptian Fencing Federation (EFF), said.

“Following our successful and spectacular organisation of the World Championship which was held in Egypt last year, our target now is to show the world the potential and the facilities of our unique new Administrative City. We aim at highlighting the city’s sports infrastructure and state of the art venues,” Al-Husseini said

“We are proud to show our new fencing venue which is fully equipped with all the equipment of the sport. We never had such facilities in the halls of Cairo Stadium. Accordingly, we held all our national competitions of this season in this new venue,” Al-Husseini added.

“The International Fencing Federation is confident in the Egyptian hospitality and organisation of World Cups and championships, especially after the spectacular organisation of the 2022 World Championship for seniors and then juniors as well as World Cups and Grand Prix events which were hosted by Egypt in the past years.

“Egypt has been hosting the Men’s Foil World Cup for several years now, but this year is the first time we host both the men’s and women’s World Cup in the same event, which is a new experience for the International Fencing Federation. If this year’s event in Egypt goes well, the IFF will then apply it to all future World Cups and championships. Holding both the men’s and women’s competitions together in one event leads to saving money by all participating countries,” Al-Husseini said.

He said in the World Cup he expects the participation of 500 athletes from 40 countries as the registration for the event is open until 17 February. 

Al-Husseini said that the Egyptian foil fencers had achieved “great results” in the past years including the silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London by Alaa Al-Sayed who, 10 years later, won the bronze medal in the 2022 Japan Foil World Cup. Now, at 32, Al-Sayed is ranked third in the international foil rankings, “which is a big achievement for Egyptian fencing”.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s Under-20 Epee Girls delegation returned safely to Egypt from Turkey after participating in the two-day World Cup held in Istanbul. The girls flew to Cairo after a powerful earthquake rocked the host country on Monday, killing thousands of people. The delegation included Aya Sherif, Salma Tarek, Sara Abdel-Wahab, Hana Eraki, Basmala Al-Todi, Farah Mahfouz, Salma Mohamed, Maya Shalash and Lolou Mohamed.

The U-20 girls finished 12th in the team event after narrowly losing in the round of 16 to Switzerland 45-44. They then beat Azerbaijan in the placement matches from 9 to 16 but lost to Japan and Bulgaria. Altogether, 21 countries took part in the World Cup.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 February, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly