Ukraine wins first Paris gold in women’s fencing

Ukraine has won its first gold medal of the Paris Olympics, beating South Korea in the final of the women’s team saber fencing on Saturday.

The Ukrainian team recovered from six points down to beat South Korea 45-42 on 22 points from individual bronze medalist Olga Kharlan. She came in for the final leg of the bout with her team Ella at 40-37 down and went 8-2 to win.

Ukraine had two medals before Saturday’s final; a silver in shooting from Serhiy Kulish and Kharlan.

That was a particularly emotional moment for Kharlan, a year after she was disqualified at the world championships for refusing to shake the hand of a Russian fencer.

That briefly put her Olympic qualification in jeopardy.

It was an incident that highlighted the tension over whether to allow Russian athletes to keep competing following their country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Five-time Olympian Kharlan has her sixth Olympic medal in a career that began with women’s team saber gold at the 2008 Olympics, when she was 17.

Japan beat France 45-40 for the bronze medal even though the French team had individual gold medalist Manon Apithy-Brunet and silver medalist Sara Balzer.