STUDY ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE ROMANIAN WOMEN’S EPEE TEAM AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Abstract

This study refers to the evolution of the Romanian Women’s Epee Team at the Olympic Games in terms of performance, but especially from the perspective of making up the team and establishing the strategy for addressing each goal-focused competition. The literature review reveals that one of the ways to increase both the quality of the training process in fencing and the success rate in team events lies in the team composition, but also in establishing the sequence of athletes competing in a match. Research purpose: The study aims to highlight the dynamics of the Romanian Women’s Epee Team through both a detailed analysis of the results achieved by athletes in their fight against various opponents and their comparison at different times of the matches. Methods: Bibliographic study, comparison, abstraction, induction and deduction methods, video analysis, mathematical and statistical methods. Results and conclusion: The sequence of athletes’ performance in team competitions and their effectiveness depending on the number of won/lost bouts, but also successful hits and recovery times were analysed based on the competition protocols for the Rio de Janeiro and London Olympics, and the performance of the Romanian Women’s Epee Team was compared with the performance achieved by other competing teams. The study has shown that, in today’s modern fencing (particularly the Epee), one of the most important factors for achieving performance in the team event refers to making up the team so that it can work as a whole in relation to the opposing team’s composition.