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The top-ranked Russian
Olympic Committee (ROC) team counts individual silver medallist
Sofya Velikaya and gold medallist Sofia Pozdniakova among its
members.
Velikaya has won four Olympic medals in her career - the fourth
the silver from the individual event held on Monday.
Although Tokyo is her first Olympic Games, Pozdniakova won gold
at the same event, carrying on her family's legacy of fencing
medals from her father Stanislav Pozdnyakov, president of the
ROC and five-time Olympic fencing medallist.
In the finals, the ROC team will face third-ranked France, which
won against Italy 45-39 in the semi-finals.
France's medal in the women's sabre team event will be their
first. If they win gold, it would also make them the second
country in Olympic history after Russia to take the top title in
all three women's team fencing events.
France has Manon Brunet, who won the bronze medal in the
individual event and is ranked third in the world behind
second-ranked Velikaya.
South Korea and Italy will face each other on the piste for the
bronze medal bout.
Russian athletes are competing under the ROC flag at the Tokyo
Olympics as part of sanctions for several doping scandals.
Tokyo 2020 marks the third time that the women's team sabre
fencing competition is being held at the Olympics. The first
gold medal of the event went to Ukraine in 2008, and the second
to Russia at Rio 2016.
Ukraine failed to qualify for Tokyo 2020.
(Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by Karishma Singh and
Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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