PARIS (Via PLDT Home) — Samantha Catantan bounced back from an injury scare and a three-point deficit to score a historic 15-13 win over Brazil’s Mariana Pistoia in the Round of 64, before giving top seed Arianna Errigo of Italy fits in a 12-15 loss that booted the Filipina out of the Olympic Games’ women’s individual foil fencing event.
Catantan, who got a helping hand from her Italian coach at Penn State University in Matteo Zenarro preparing for the Olympics, stared at a 4-7 deficit and appeared to hurt the same left knee that she rehabilitated from an ACL injury suffered in Cambodia SEA Games when she backtracked in the first round against the Brazilian.
But Catantan brushed off the injury scare and aggressively pounced on her foe, an army officer in Brazil, to seize the lead at 9-8 en route to the victory that netted her a Round of 32 showdown against the top seed Errigo.
“Inaral namin ang laro ng Brazilian,” said Catantan’s Filipino coach Rolando “Amatov” Canlas, before Samantha went to practice on Saturday.
“Malalampasan niya ito,” Canlas predicted prior to the bout. “Hindi siya (Pistoia) masyado sumasali sa mga worlds, kaya 50-50 tayo du’n. Puwede manalo.”
But while the no. 266 Catantan was able to handle the no. 65 Pistoia, the no. 2 and top-seed Errigo was clearly the superior player, although the Filipina was able to give her all she could handle.
The Italian fencer set the tone of the match at 4-0, but led by only 6-5 at the end of the first round. The 36-year-old Errigo, the gold medalist in the 2012 London Olympics, posted her biggest lead of 11-6 in the second, but the 22-year-old Catantan would not go away.
The Penn State standout was within striking distance until the third at 12-14, before Errigo secured the win with a point in the final 54 seconds for the 3-point victory.
Catantan may have failed to advance to the finals in her first Olympics, but her lone win was significant as it was the first by a Filipino fencer in the Olympics in a direct elimination round.
Barcelona Olympian (1992) and now Philippine Sports Commissioner Walter Torres won one bout (and lost five), but it was in the Round of Pools, failing to qualify for the finals at 53rd spot out of 59 participants.
Maxine Esteban, another pure-blooded Filipina representing Ivory Coast, also fell in the round of 32, losing to France’s Pauline Ranvier in the women’s foil individual.
