2 fencing team events slashed for Rio Games

2 fencing team events slashed for Rio Games

Published Nov. 29, 2013 1:35 p.m. ET

The men's saber team event and the women's foil team event have been dropped for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The International Fencing Federation made the decision Friday at its congress in Paris.

The federation has been rotating two team events out of the Olympics since the 2008 Beijing Games. The team events in men's epee and women's saber were left out of the 2012 London Olympics.

In Rio, men and women will still be able to compete individually in the epee, foil and saber. The team events will be men's epee and foil and women's epee and saber.

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Fencing will have a quota of 212 athletes in Rio.

The federation also announced that the Russian cities of Kazan and Moscow will host the world championships in 2014 and 2015. The president of the fencing federation is Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

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