Fencing triumph for team Italy
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The Olympic fencing competition ended as it started last Saturday - with Italy striking gold, this time in the men's team foil.
And how sweet it was for Andrea Baldini, the 26-year-old dropped from their squad in Beijing after failing a drug test.Baldini, completely exonerated a year later, had lost the bronze medal match in the individual event, but took the favourites to a 45-39 victory in the final over plucky seventh seeds Japan.
Germany captured bronze by easily beating the United States 45-27.
The Italians had been given a tough time in the quarter-finals by hosts Great Britain, but Baldini closed out the win.
He, reigning world champion Andrea Cassara and Giorgio Avola, replacing Valerio Aspromonte during their semi-final, had their nerve tested by Japan as well.
It was 36-36 in the eighth of the nine bouts, but Cassara showed his class against substitute Suguru Awaji and Yuki Ota, like Richard Kruse earlier, could not turns things round against Baldini.
Germany, having lost in sudden death to Japan in the semi-finals, took bronze in a match most notable for the part played by their substitute Andre Wessels.
The 30-year-old won a medal for spending only a matter of seconds on the piste in the entire competition, coming on when Sebastian Bachmann twisted his knee in the penultimate bout.
Cassara and Aspromonte were the top two seeds for the individual events, but both went out in the last eight and Baldini's defeat meant they had been put in the shade by their women's foil side.
Elisa Di Francisca, Arianna Errigo and Valentina Vezzali had won gold, silver and bronze in the individual event and took the team title as well.
The men's success meant that Italy out-scored South Korea and China with three golds to their two each and with seven medals to Korea's six remain the main power in the sport.
Cassara said: "Of course it was a big upset for all three of us (not to win individual medals). Everybody expected at least one or two.
"All of that, plus these five days in between our two events, have stressed us out.
"We've spent too many days thinking and thinking about our lost bouts again and again."
