At their annual congress, held in Guangzhou China, the International Fencing Federation (FIE) announced last Saturday (November 21) that China’s Wuxi has been awarded the hosting rights to the 2018 FIE Senior World Championships.

Wuxi finally becomes the host city of the event after receiving 69 votes. Japan’s Fukuoka received only 47 votes from 122 National Federations, according to the official website of FIE.

The announcement means that this will be the first time an FIE event of this kind will be held in a Chinese city. This comes after two unsuccessful earlier bids, which were launched in the 1990’s and 2009 respectively.

“This is the highest-profile international (sports) event to be held in Wuxi since the PRC came into being and it will have the greatest ever number of foreign athletes participating. This is the first time that China has been awarded the right to organize the FIE Senior World Championships”, said Zhang Hong, a deputy director of Wuxi Sports Bureau.

“(It is) difficult but also significant as well”, Zhang added.

As well as the voting for the host cities of future FIE events, the congress decided that the Italian city Livorno will hold the 2018 Veterans’ World Championships and the 2017 Cadet and Junior World Championships will be staged in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, is located in Eastern China and has also won the rights to hold the 2016 Asian Fencing Championships

Source: FIE

Proofread by John Devlin