Romanian Ana Maria Popescu tops rankings, wins fencing world cup

Romanian Ana Maria Popescu has won the women’s épée world cup for the fourth time after gathering most points in the fencing competition charts, the Romanian Fencing Federation announced.

She gathered 176.000 points, ahead of Brazilian Nathalie Moellhausen (157.000 points) and Chinese Sun Yiwen (149.000 points).

The International Fencing Federation decided to grant the 2020 titles this month as many competitions could not be organized because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The federation decided that the winners will be named depending on the world ranking during the month of March 2020, when the competitions stopped.

Popescu was previously a world fencing champion in the 2007-2008, 2008-2009 and 2012-2013 seasons. She won the silver medal in the individual épée event at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and the gold medal in the 2013 European Fencing Championships. With Romania’s team, she was twice world champion (2010 and 2011) and six-times European champion (2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2014, and 2015). This year, she won the Fencing World Cup at Doha.

(Photo: Marian Mocanu | Dreamstime.com)