Sofja Alexandrovna Velikaya

Velikaya at the European Fencing Championships 2014

Sofja Alexandrovna Velikaja ( Russian Софья Александровна Великая ; born June 8, 1985 in Alma-Ata , Kazakh SSR , Soviet Union ) is a Russian saber fencer , five-time world champion and six-time European fencing champion. She is fighting for CSKA Moscow .

successes

Since 2002 she has been fighting in the Russian team, in 2003 she was European champion for the first time in Bourges and repeated this in Copenhagen the next year . In the same year in New York , a few days after her 19th birthday, she became team world champion. In 2005 Velikaya won two silver medals (individual and team) at the World Championships in Leipzig and achieved the same result at the European Championships in Zalaegerszeg . In 2006 Velikaya won gold twice at the European Championships in Izmir and a bronze medal in team fencing at the World Championships in Turin . In 2007 she won silver in singles and bronze with the team at the European Championships in Ghent . She also received bronze with the team at the World Championships in St. Petersburg .

In 2008 she won the European Championship in Kiev for the fifth time , and for the second time in an individual competition. In 2009 and 2010 at the European Championships Velikaya won three silver medals.

In 2010, at the World Championships in Paris , she won her second World Championship medal in individual - bronze. With the Russian team, she won gold in the final against Ukraine , making her team world champion for the second time.

The following year at the World Championships in Catania , she won the first World Championship gold in the individual and the third time gold in the team competition. At the European Championships in Sheffield she won bronze with the team. In spring 2012 in Kiev Velikaya again won the world championship with the team, in June the team also won the European championships in Italy . Since 2003 she has won fourteen medals at European championships and ten at world championships.

Velikaya (left) and Charlan at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Their first Olympic Games were in Beijing in 2008 . In the individual, Velikaya won the first three rounds and the quarter-final match against the Chinese Tan Xue with a score of 15: 9. In the semifinals she met the American fencer Sada Jacobson and lost with a score of 11:15. In the battle for the bronze medal, she met another American Rebecca Ward and lost in a bitter fight with 14:15. The Russian national team was eliminated from the team competition in the quarter-finals against the eventual Olympic champions from Ukraine with a score of 34:45.

At the Olympic Games in London Velikaya won in the quarter-finals with a score of 15:12 against the Ukrainian Olha Charlan . In the final she lost to the Korean fencer Kim Ji-yeon with 9:15 and received silver.

In 2015 she won both the European Championship and the World Championship in singles. She became individual European champion again in 2016 and received silver in the individual at the 2016 Olympic Games . In 2019 she won gold with the team at the European Championship , while she achieved bronze in the individual.

Web links

Commons : Sofja Velikaja  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Sofja Velikaja - Rankings and Results in the database of the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (English / French)
• Sofja Velikaja in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original ).