(Beijing, April 19) The second-day competition of the "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 FIE World Championships concluded this evening as France grabbed the gold medal in the women's team epee. China and Germany placed second and third respectively.

Before today's final match, China, currently world No. 1, eliminated Sweden 45-41 in the preliminaries and Romania 36-33 in the quarterfinals and Germany 25-24 in the semifinals. China was

As 2006 world team epee champions China faced a great challenge from archrival France, 2006 world runners-up, in the final. China led the first seven bouts 15-12, before France saw its turning point when 1996 Olympic champion Laura Flessel leveled the score 16-16 and went on to draw the bout six more times to finish it 22-22.

With rich game experience Maureen Nisima, the French Olympic bronze medalist, soon led in the decisive bout, forcing Li Na into errors one after the other. With seconds left before the end of the bout Li could do nothing but conceded the match and the gold medal to the French team.

Poland, ranking fourth in the finals, showed its strength as a team to beat. After beating Ukraine 45-39 in the preliminaries and Italy 45-33 in the quarterfinals, Poland took on France in the semifinals and lost to it by a narrow margin of three hits. The participating teams were all impressed with Poland's outstanding performance despite its loss to Germany in the bronze-medal match.

Placing fifth to eighth were Romania, Italy, Russia and Hungary. The 9th- to 16th-place finishers were Estonia, Switzerland, Sweden, the USA, Ukraine, Japan, Hong Kong China and Canada.