Calgary’s Eleanor Harvey came close to a second medal in fencing Thursday at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
Harvey, a member of the Epic Fencing Club, and her Canadian teammatess finished fourth in the women’s team foil competition after losing to Japan 33-32 in a hard-fought bronze-medal bout.
With Canada down by three, Harvey cut Japan’s lead to one but ran out of time in the final round.
Harvey and her teammates narrowly defeated Olympic host France earlier in the day to reach the semifinal before falling to a strong U.S. team by a score of 45-31.
“I really was hoping that we could win a medal,” said Harvey, a native of Hamilton, Ont. “But when we beat France, we already remade (Canadian) history for best result for women’s foil at an Olympics. That’s something to be proud of.”
Harvey won Canada’s first-ever Olympic medal in the sport last Sunday with a bronze in the women’s individual foil.
In a history-making tour de force, the 29-year-old fencer, who used to sword fight in the back yard as a youngster, duelled her way to a bronze, scoring Canada’s first ever Olympic podium finish in the event.
If that sounds hard to believe, it is for her, too. She beat Italian Alice Volpe, the fourth-ranked foil fencer in the world by a 15-12 count, as if to put an exclamation point on the feat. Harvey was ranked No. 14.
“It’s going to take some time to absorb the feeling because when I scored the last point, I couldn’t believe it and I still can’t believe it,” Harvey said. “It’s weird. It’s a very strange, surreal feeling.”
The victory over Volpi capped a roller coaster ride for Harvey, who won her first four bouts and looked to be sailing right into the gold-medal duel. She was fencing like never before, but met her match in the semifinals when American Lauren Scruggs crushed Harvey’s gold medal dream. Harvey never looked in control and the American cruised to victory 15-9. Scruggs celebrated, Harvey had to regroup in time to face a woman ranked 10 spots higher, with a historic medal on the line. Not for the feint of heart.
But Harvey scored the first couple of points in the bronze medal bout, built a lead with an intensity that Volpi simply couldn’t or wouldn’t match, and Harvey hung on through the ups and downs that are indicative of a close bout in a sport that demands agility and guile.
And there she was at the end, slumped in apparent disbelief on the piste while the crowd saluted her effort in a 15-14 upset. Her coach Alex Martin gave her a hug. And she took it all in with a look of wonder on her face.
Because there is no way that a Canadian would expect to wind up where she did on Sunday. She basically crashed through the European barricade that has always surrounded the Olympic podium. The dominant world powers in the sport have always been Italy, France and Hungary, with 346 Olympic medals between them. Canada had zero until Sunday, the United States 33.
A Canadian fencing medal? Mon dieu.
Harvey always wanted to be an Olympian, but thought maybe she could sprint into the Games, or perhaps it would be karate that got her into the five-ring circus. But she turned sword fighting into an athletic career. How about that?
“A friend recommended fencing because we used to sword fight in the backyard,” she told the International Fencing Federation website. “I went to my first practice, and I beat this kid who had been fencing for a year. I was so competitive that it was enough to keep me going.”
That was 20 years ago, and it hasn’t been a smooth road. But it brought her here, to the Grand Palais, and she did the rest, riding a wave of momentum into the history books. She was seventh at Rio 2016, a distant 16th at Tokyo 2020. And now she steps onto the podium, with help. She owes a massive debt of gratitude to her mother Lise.
“She’s made a lot of sacrifices for me. In Tokyo she couldn’t be there because nobody could be there, so it’s really, really cool that she was able to be here, watch me have the best fencing result of my life, have a really good day, and see all her love and support pay off.
“I know that however I would have done she would still view it as her sacrifices paying off but it’s nice to have a concrete thing to hold and be like sweet, this actually happened.
“She pretty much paid for all the fencing, before I had support, by herself and she had to sell her house to afford to send me to tournaments and we had to move in with my grandma and my grandma, would sleep on a couch so I could have a bed. So it’s not just may mom, it’s my whole family. So yeah, it feels good.”
It felt great as she rolled through the first couple of rounds. She beat Yuting Wang of China and Julia Walczyk of Poland before upsetting Martina Favaretto in the quarter-finals. She trailed early and again halfway through, but staged a monumental comeback to win 15-14.
“I was winning the phrases,” she said after that bout. “In terms of fencing if you watch it, I was winning the actions, but I was just missing. And so I had to calm down and figure out where to put my point. I figured out a couple things when I was getting hit and I think that can kind of like, lull the person into a false sense of security, even though she hit me, I didn’t let her hit me, but I understood what was happening and was able to keep a pretty level head, even at 14-14.”
Because the last thing you want to do is panic.
“I have done that before and I regret it every time and I wanted to go into this tournament, win or lose, do my best to keep my composure. If I lose that way, I can live with that. If I lose and I feel like I beat myself, that haunts me. I don’t want that.”
The loss to Scruggs might have haunted her, but a bronze medal will exorcise that spectre. This is one of those out-of-the-blue moments that make the Olympics such an unpredictable pageant of triumph and despair. It’s the intensity. Some athletes can rise above the nerves it creates. Others wilt. Some get lucky. Some get to live out a childhood dream hatched in the back yard. From sword fighting in Steeltown to duelling for bronze in Paris 20 years later, that is indeed the ride of a lifetime.
Also among locals on Day 6 at the Olympics:
• Okotoks swimmer Finlay Knox stroked to third in his semifinal in a time of 1:57.76 to advance him to Friday’s final (12:43 p.m. MT) of the 200-metre men’s individual medley.• Calgary’s Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Strathmore’s Jessica Sevick and Canada’s women’s rowing eight squad advanced to the A final with a second-place showing in the repechage. Their time of 6:04.81 was fast enough to advance them onto the Saturday’s finale (2:50 a.m. MT) to defend their gold medal won at the Tokyo Games.• Calgary’s Yvonne Ejim and Canada lost in women’s basketball to Australia 70-65 to fall to 0-2 in Group B play
-Postmedia Network