In light of the US men's epee team getting black-carded recently I've seen a bunch of comments about their chances of going to the olympics effectively being sunk.
You can qualify as a team by either being top 4 in the world, or Number 1 in American zone (excluding anyone in the top 4 in the world).
Currently Venezuela is #5 in the world, and number 1 in the American zone. They won the Zonal event, which gives them a huge lead on the USA, to the point it's very very unlikely the USA could catch them - especially since the USA got 0 points from the zonal event, which is generally their most important event.
So the next best chance for the USA is for Venezuela to be top 4 in the world, so to exclude them from the American zone. If that's the case, the USA would need to pull ahead of Colombia, Canada, Argentina, Cuba etc. Historically, these teams have been quite close, but with a 0 on Zonals it's moderately unlikely that they'll catch all of these teams, especially since they had a poor performance in the first qualifying event in Istanbul.
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