Olympic Fencing 2016: Medal Winners and Scores After Thursday's Results
The sixth day of fencing action at the 2016 Olympics featured the women's epee team finals, highlighted by Romania taking home the country's first gold medal of the Games with a 44-38 victory over China.
Earlier Thursday, China defeated Estonia, 45-36, and Romania defeated Russia, 45-31, to set up their gold-medal match. Estonia and Russia did not have time to wallow in their sorrows, because they kicked off the afternoon session with the bronze medal on the line.
Here are the scores from the two medal matches:
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| Gold Medal | China vs. Romania | Romania def. China, 44-38 |
| Bronze Medal | Estonia vs. Russia | Russia def. Estonia, 37-31 |
China vs. Romania
The battle for Olympic supremacy began with Ana Maria Popescu getting Romania out to a 1-0 lead.
Simona Pop and Xu Anqi ratcheted up the intensity in the second matchup, trading blows as Romania maintained its one-point advantage heading into the showdown between Simona Gherman and Sun Yujie.
Gherman helped open things up for Romania with a 4-2 victory. That would be the story for most of the match, as Romania was methodical and kept China off-balance for the remaining six periods.
The fifth was when Romania was able to get some separation thanks to a dazzling performance by Popescu, who tossed a 4-0 shutout to make the score 14-9.
Trailing 24-16 heading into the eighth, China tried to make a run behind Sun Yiwen, who was able to outscore Gherman in a 9-6 victory. There was a small light shining on the Chinese team with just three minutes remaining.
However, any hope for China quickly dissipated in the ninth, when Popescu took the first four points against Xu to push Romania's lead back to nine points. From there, Popescu was on cruise control.
After Xu closed the gap to four again with just 15 seconds remaining, Popescu was able to wait back for Romania's 40th point.
Russia vs. Estonia
Not wanting to waste any time, Russia picked Estonia apart early and late to secure the bronze medal.
The FIE captured the memorable moments on Twitter:
Russia was in charge of the bronze-medal match from the opening bell. Estonia was able to make a run in the middle periods, closing the gap to 13-10 when Julia Beljajeva took the first two points against Tatiana Logunova.
Logunova responded by winning three of the last four points before the fourth period came to an end, allowing Russia to move its lead to 16-11.
Lyubov Shutova attempted to follow her teammate's lead, though Irina Embrich did all she could to bring Estonia back with an impressive 7-4 victory in the fifth period. Estonia still needed to make up two points to even the match, but momentum was shifting in its favor.
In the seventh, Shutova and Beljajeva took their turns again. Beljajeva won the first point to cut Estonia's deficit to 20-19. After Shutova won the next point, the two carefully plotted their next moves before Shutova was able to score on a counterattack after Beljajeva got too aggressive.
After Russia maintained a 25-21 edge heading into the ninth, Embrich tried her best to get Estonia back into the contest with an aggressive attack against Violetta Kolobova.
Embrich was able to get Estonia within three points twice as the clock was winding down, but Kolobova responded each time with a point of her own. Embrich again closed the gap to three points at 34-31, but with less than 20 seconds remaining, it was going to take a Herculean effort that never came.
Kolobova was able to take advantage of Embrich's need to constantly attack, taking the last three points and securing the bronze medal for Russia. It's the country's first Olympic medal in the women's team epee event since 2004.
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