South Korea’s women’s epee team won the team event at the Asian Games for the first time in 21 years. The team of Choi In-jung (Gyeryong City Hall), Song Sera (Busan Metropolitan City Hall), Kang Young-mi (Gwangju Seo-gu Office), and Lee Hye-in (Gangwon-do Office) defeated Hong Kong 36-34 in the team event final at the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games on Sunday at the Hangzhou University of Electronic Arts Gymnasium in Hangzhou, China .It was the second gold medal for South Korean fencing in the women’s epee team event at an Asian Games in 21 years and the first since Busan 2002.Choi In-jung won her second gold medal of the Games after edging out Song Sera in the individual final in what was billed as a “house fight .Earlier in the day, Korea’s women’s epee team, ranked No. 1 in the world in the team competition, thrashed India 45-25 in the quarterfinals before meeting arch-rivals China in the semifinals. The Chinese have handed Korea defeat in the women’s epee team final at both Incheon 2014 and Jakarta-Palembang 2018. Notably, the match was decided by a single point in Jakarta five years ago. However, having already broken the “China jinx” in the semifinals of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics (silver medal), the Korean women’s epee team took a 30-27 lead to advance to the final. The gold medal match against Hong Kong, who were the finalists when they won the team title at this year’s Asian Championships, was a close affair early on. It was tied 13-13 after four rounds, nearly half of the nine rounds .Then Korea took the lead thanks to the play of Song Sera, last year’s two-time world champion and silver medalist in the individual event. Song was responsible for six points in the fifth round against Wai Ling Chan to build a 19-15 lead. The lead narrowed to 22-19 after the sixth round with Kang Young-mi, the eldest sister of 1985-born Kang, but Choi In-jung showed her individual championship form to take a 26-21 lead after the seventh round with Kamonchu .Leading 29-25 after the eighth round, again featuring Kang Young-mi, the Koreans were backed into a corner in the final nine rounds of the ‘ace match-up’ as Song Sera faced a fierce counterattack from Vivian Kong.Down 32-31 with 28 seconds to go and 35-34 with 5.5 seconds to go, Song sealed the victory with a turnaround attack with 3.3 seconds left.Earlier in the day, the Korean fencers swept the gold medals on the first day of the team competition as Lee Kwang-hyun (Hwaseong City Hall), Ha Tae-gyu (Daejeon City Corporation), Heo Jun (Gwangju City Hall) and Lim Chul-woo (Seongbuk-gu Office) combined for a second consecutive victory in the men’s foil event. Three individual gold medals in men’s sabre (Oh Sang-wook), women’s sabre (Yoon Ji-soo) and women’s epee (Choi In-jung) were followed by two more in the team competition, as Korea led the overall fencing standings with five gold, two silver and one bronze medal .The Koreans, who had won 46 Asian Games gold medals before Jakarta, surpassed the 50-mark with the men’s foil team event and claimed their 51st gold in the women’s epee. The men’s sabre and women’s foil teams will continue their quest for a 바카라사이트 third consecutive medal on Monday.