MAKING A POINT
Fencer Kelley Hurley picks up individual victory before falling
CHIBA, Japan — Kelley Hurley’s avocation as a world-class fencer as well as her career aspirations in medicine require her on occasion to walk a thin line — live on the edge, she says, or fall over.
Hurley, 33, had it both ways Saturday, winning her first individual match in women’s epee in her fourth Olympics but falling in the round of 16 to be eliminated from medal contention.
Her younger sister, Courtney Hurley, 30, lost her first match in her third Olympics. Both will return for the women’s team epee, an event in which the U.S. women won the 2018 world title.
Both of Kelley Hurley’s matches were decided in extra time after the score was tied after three three-minute periods. She defeated Erika Kirpu of Estonia 15-14 and lost 12-11 to Aizanat Murtazaeva of Russia.
Courtney Hurley lost 15-8 to Zhu Mingye of China in a match that was halted on points in the third period.
Kelley Hurley, who was born in Houston, grew up in San Antonio and trains with her sister at Alliance Fencing Academy in Houston, kept to her pressing style in both matches, playing most of the nine minutes at her opponent’s end of the fencing strip.
“It’s how I fence. I pressure, pressure, pressure,” she said. “I ended up on the other side a lot.”
In the opener, the secondyear medical student at St. James School of Medicine pressed the action against Kirpu throughout, leading 4-3 after the first three-minute period and trailing 8-7 at the end of two.
The match began cautiously, with neither fencer scoring a point in the opening minute but picked up with 11 combined points in the third. Kirpu led 1210 and 14-13 before Hurley tied it on a touch with 39 seconds to send the match into a suddendeath overtime.
Kelley Hurley won in the extra period with 25 seconds to go, clenching her fist and letting out a yell of triumph.
Both Hurley and Murtazaeva were cautious in the first period, which Hurley led 2-0. Murtazaeva led 4-3 after two periods and led by two points with 1:24 left in regulation before Hurley tied it with 23 seconds remaining.
The Russian got the winning touch 28 seconds into the oneminute overtime when Hurley said her attacking skills failed her.
“I had confidence in my attack; I just couldn’t make myself do it,” she said. “It was me vs. my own brain out there. I hesitated, and that’s what I got. I won one in overtime and lost one. That’s how it rolls sometimes.”
Courtney Hurley, by contrast, led 4-3 in the first period, but the Chinese fencer outscored her 11-3 in the second period and ended it with a 15th point in the third.
“She (the Chinese fencer) was faster and more on point,” Hurley said.
As in 2016, women’s epee fencing occurred Saturday within scant hours of the Opening Ceremony, making the sisters among the first athletes to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.
Both sisters lost their opening matches in 2016, and Kelley Hurley’s win was her first individual victory in four Olympics. Courtney Hurley is a three-time Olympian, and the sisters won a bronze medal in team epee in 2012.
This time, Kelley Hurley said, “I was able to control my nerves. It just comes with experience, you know. I was able to keep reminding myself of key elements. The last few (Olympics), I was just kind of winging it, to be honest.”
U.S. fencer Katherine Holmes also lost her first-round match, 15-12 to Sera Song of South Korea. She will join the Hurleys and Anna Van Brummen of Houston in the women’s team epee event later in the Olympics.
Alliance Fencing owner Andrey Geva, the women’s epee national team coach, coached Van Brummen before she attended Princeton and has trained the Hurleys, who graduated from San Antonio Warren and Notre Dame, for the last five-plus years.