There wasn’t a lot of success for the US fencers on Friday in the preliminary rounds for the epee grand prix event. Only one man and one woman advanced from the preliminaries, joining the two women who were already qualified directly to the table of 64. Joining Kelley Hurley and Katharine Holmes in the table of 64 will be Courtney Hurley. She advanced by going 5-1 in her pool and earning a spot in the table of 64 for being one of the 16 best women in pool play. Two other American women were eliminated in pool play: Natalie Vie and Katarzyna Trzopek who both went 2-4.

Trzopek missed out on a spot in the preliminary knockout matches for the last six spots in the table of 64 by hits scored, two less than the final qualifier, while Vie missed out on indicator score as her aggregate score was -5 in pool play while Trzopek and the last qualifier had -2 scores. Kelly Hurley will be seeded 12th, Holmes 15th, and Courtney Hurley 26th in the table of 64 so hopefully the US will have some success on Saturday.

On the men’s side Jason Pryor went 5-1 to grab one of the 16 spots advancing to the table of 64 from pool play while on the low end Lewis Weiss went 1-5 and was eliminated after pool play. The other three Americans participated in knockout competition for the final 32 spots in the table of 64. Ariel Simmons lost 15-10 to Nelson Lopez Pourtier of France, Dennis Kraft lost 15-13 to Satoru Uyama of Japan, and Alen Hadzic lost 15-6 to Martin Capek of the Czech Republic. Pryor will be seeded 27th in the table of 64 on Sunday. 

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