Though it's not quite a top contender yet, China's up-and-coming fencing squad is striking out with courage and pride to break the Western stranglehold on the Olympic piste in Paris.

With improving strength collectively in the team events, such as women's epee and foil, Team China is gearing up to grab the world's attention in Paris, with its target set on podium finishes in both team and individual disciplines.

Sun Yiwen, reigning Olympic champion in women's individual epee, remains Team China's sharpest competitor and its biggest medal hope, three years after she got the whole delegation off to a golden start by winning the country's first Olympic title in the discipline on the first day of competition in Tokyo.

Sun Yiwen (R) competes against Song Se-ra of South Korea in the women's epee individual quarterfinal at the Hangzhou Asian Games on Sept. 24, 2023. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)

With her narrow 11-10 victory over Romanian veteran Ana Maria Popescu in the Tokyo final hailed as an instant classic, Sun has reset her focus on achieving another feat — to become the first woman in the world to defend her Olympic gold in the event since Hungarian great Timea Nagy did so in 2004.

Shaping up for her third Olympics at the age of 32, Sun believes she's as lethal and motivated as all her younger opponents, and is pushing ahead with her Olympic ambition.

"The goal for the Paris Olympics is, naturally, the gold medal. I want to rewrite the history in which no woman has defended the epee Olympic title in nearly 20 years," Sun told Beijing Youth Daily before she left for Paris on July 14.

"The athlete's desire to win is instinctual, because it is not only a personal achievement, but also the glory of bringing honor to her country. At the same time, I am also keen to transcend my own limitations."

To outperform all opponents, and particularly herself, Sun has adopted a radical change in her attacking technique since the beginning of this year, becoming more aggressive in scoring, which proved successful as she led young teammates Yu Sihan and Tang Junyao to a runner-up finish at the FIE World Cup's Nanjing leg in March, losing only to top team Italy in the final, after beating world No 2 South Korea in the quarterfinals.

Sun's individual pursuit of a golden repeat in Paris will start on the second day of the Games, after the July 26 opening ceremony, with host favorite and reigning world champion Marie-Florence Candassamy and six-time World Cup medalist Alberta Santuccio of Italy posing the biggest threats to Sun's ambition.

The Chinese women's foil team, bolstered by a series of impressive international results over the past year, has emerged as another promising medal hope in the team event, with its young core of Chen Qingyuan and Huang Qianqian "en garde" to achieve personal breakthroughs.

Led by Chen, winner of the Paris leg of the World Cup in January, and Huang, an individual winner at last year's Asian Games, the squad, also including Wang Yuting, beat tough rivals Japan and South Korea to claim its second Asiad team gold in women's foil in 29 years in Hangzhou.

Speaking about the reasons for the team's resurgence, coach Lei Sheng attributed the progress to the growing inner strength of his young fencers.

"The Chinese women's foil team has long been in a disadvantaged position, mainly because the athletes felt that the world championship was unattainable. I first helped them to break this psychological barrier, set ambitious goals and then work together to approach these goals step by step," said Lei, who delivered a first individual fencing gold for China's men in foil at London 2012.

"Once technical ability and tactical understanding reach a certain level, breakthroughs become an expected result," he said.

Taking advantage from foreign coaching, men's foil fencers Mo Ziwei, Chen Haiwei and Xu Jie have also been making consistent progress up the world rankings, with their unexpected silver-medal finish in the team event at last year's world championships in Milan, beating traditional powerhouses France and the United States on the way, serving up a major confidence boost.

"The performance at the worlds has significantly lifted the morale of the men's foil team for the Olympics. Yet we still have some catching up to do in the final preparations," said Wang Haibin, a formidable member of China's gold medal-winning men's foil team at Sydney 2000, and president of Chinese Fencing Association.

In the men's saber, Shen Chenpeng will be the delegation's sole representative, while Yang Hengyu will carry the women's hopes. Completing the lineup, Wang Zijie will compete in the men's epee.

The fencing competition at the 2024 Paris Games will take place in the heart of the city, at the Grand Palais on the iconic Avenue des Champs Elysees.

The competitions, both individual and team, will adopt a single-elimination, bracket-style format, where fencers win head-to-head bouts in individual disciplines to advance to the next round. Each bout is contested over nine minutes, evenly separated into three periods, with the first fencer to score 15 points, or the leading fencer at the end of the bout, declared the winner.

If fencers are tied at the end of the nine minutes, a one-minute, sudden-death tiebreaker is contested, in which the first fencer to score wins.

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