The ROC men attempted to follow the ROC women's lead and win a team gold just 24 hours removed from the women winning the team foil title. However, they couldn't stop Japan, from making Olympic history.
Japan who got off to a hot start that ROC never recovered from. Japan's Masaru Yamada bested ROC's Sergey Bida 5-4 in the first round, and then Koki Kano took down Nikita Glazkov in Round 2. ROC's Pavel Sukhov eventually earned his team a victory in the third round by taking down Satoru Uyama, but Japan responded promptly by winning another pair of rounds.
Despite Japan's success, though, ROC managed to hang around for much of the match. They never lost a round by more than two touches, but Japan's consistency throughout the match proved to be the x-factor.
Japan took the match by a score of 45-36. This serves as Japan's first-ever fencing gold medal in Olympic history. They had previously only owned two silver medals in fencing — one for individual foil from Beijing and one for team foil from London.
The fact that they earned this gold on their home turf was just the icing on the cake.
South Korea Takes Bronze
The Chinese trio of Chao Dong, Minghao Lan and Zijie Wang took on the South Korean group of Youngjun Kweon, Sangyoung Park and Jaeho Song for bronze Friday morning, and it's South Korea who will be headed home with hardware.
The bronze medal match was tight from the very start when Kweon and Dong tied the first round with two touches apiece. The largest score margin came in the sixth and eighth rounds, both of which ended with a three-touch gap.
The final round began with a 34-34 tie, but Park delivered for South Korea, earning 11 touches to win the match by a score of 45-42.
