Nicolas Limbach wins Budapest men's sabre grand prix Gold medalist Nicolas Limbach (2nd L) from Germany, silver medalist Aron Szilagyi...

Nicolas Limbach wins Budapest men's sabre grand prix

Gold medalist Nicolas Limbach (2nd L) from Germany, silver medalist Aron Szilagyi (1st L) from Hungary, and bronze medalists Alexey Yakimenko (2nd R) from Russia and Woo Young Won from South Korea pose for a photo at the award ceremony of the Men's Sabre Grand Prix in Budapest, Hungary on March 4, 2012. (Xinhua/Attila Volgyi)

BUDAPEST, March 4 (Xinhua) -- World number one Nicolas Limbach of Germany beat Hungary's Aron Szilagyi 15-11 in the final of the 2012 Men's Sabre Budapest Grand Prix on Sunday.

The German, who beat world number five Woo Young Won of South Korea 15-9 in the semifinal, was made to fight hard by Szilagyi, who had earlier come through 15-12 in a tight semifinal against world number two Alexey Yakimenko of Russia.

In front of his home crowd Szilagyi built a 9-6 lead but Limbach moved up a gear, levelled at 10-10 and allowed the Hungarian, ranked sixth in the world, just one more point. Szilagyi's second placing moves him to second place in the world rankings.

From a 5-man Chinese team which entered the competition, two made it into the last 64, but both were beaten by the same fencer, Timothy Morehouse of the United States. In the round of 64, the American won 15-13 against Liu Xiao, ranked 15th in the world. Morehouse, ranked 50 in the world, then beat Zhong Man 15-7 in the round of 32.

A total of 134 fencers, including 27 of the top 32 world-ranked fencers, from 33 countries and regions took part in the event.