(Beijing, April 20) After three days of competition the "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 FIE World Championships concluded at the Fencing Hall of the National Convention Centre this evening, with Italy winning both the men's team and individual foil events and France clinching the women's team epee title. The operation of the venue, which will be used for Beijing's Olympic fencing competition in the coming August, also turned out to be successful, to the satisfaction of the International Fencing Federation (FIE), the governing body of the sport, and the event organizers.

The "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 fencing event held on April 28-20 was divided into two parts, the FIE World Championships and the Beijing Men's Individual Foil International Invitational Tournament. The FIE world fixture featured the men's team foil and women's team epee events, while the men's individual foil invitational offered one gold medal together with a money award totaling 10,000 euros.

Italy wins men's team foil

On the opening day of the FIE world fixture, 2004 Olympic champions Italy was pitted against 2007 world runners-up Germany in the men's team foil final. Italy showed its predominance throughout the match and beat Germany 45-35 to claim the title.

A pre-tournament favorite, France, triple winners at the World Championships, suffered unexpected setbacks at the hands of Poland in the quarterfinals. After another defeat by host China in the classification 5-8, France had to be content with the seventh place. China was fifth after Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia.

France captures women's team epee

Before taking on France in the women's team epee final China, world No. 1 who had had a plain sailing all the way into the final after eliminating Sweden, Romania and Germany, had been expected to repeat their winning performance over old rivals France at the 2006 World Championships.

In the final, Laura Flessel, France's double Olympic champion in both the individual and team epee, gave an outstanding performance by coming from behind to tie the score at 16 through 22-22. Flessel's teammate Maureen Nisima, the French Olympic bronze medalist, soon led in the decisive bout, forcing China's Li Na into errors time and again. With seconds left in the bout Li could do nothing but conceded the match and the gold medal to the French team, by a margin of two hits.

Italian Andrea Cassara hits men's individual foil gold

In today's men's individual foil invitational, 2004 Olympic bronze medalist Andrea Cassara from Italy turned out to be the biggest winner. After defeating Frenchman Erwan Le Pechoux and Russian Alexey Cheremisinov in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively, the Italian veteran achieved a comfortable win over Germany's Benjamin Kleibrink for the gold medal.

The bronze medal went to Cassara's teammate Andrea Baldini

A number of elite fencers fell in the event, including Japan's Chida Kenta in the eliminations round of 64 and China's Zhu Jun in the eliminations round of 16.

For the event organizing committee, they had a successful dress rehearsal of the venue operation before the Beijing Olympic Games which were merely four months away.