Delila Hatuel

Career

Delila Hatuel placed ninth in team foil at the 1997 World Fencing Championships in Cape Town, South Africa, and eighth in team foil at the 1998 European Fencing Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In July 2007, she finished sixth in individual foil at the European Fencing Championships in Ghent, Belgium. Throughout 2008, she finished in the top 10 on the Fencing World Cup circuit and was ranked in the top 16 in the world. By April 2008, she was ranked 9th in the world in women's foil.

At the 2008 European Fencing Championships in Kyiv, Ukraine, she defeated Olympic foil champion Valentina Vezzali but injured her knee at the end of the bout, finishing seventh in individual foil. The injury was a torn anterior cruciate ligament that required surgical repair. She underwent hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Beer Yaakov, Israel, to recover in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Ranked 11th in the world, she competed in Beijing at age 27, placing 19th after a 10–9 overtime loss to reigning world champion Viktoriya Nikishina of Russia.

Hatuel said: 'I'm sad, but this loss has nothing to do with my injury. I lost in a tight match.' A Haaretz reporter noted 'it seems that Hatuel's knee injury was agonizing.' She planned further surgery and hoped to compete at the 2012 Olympics.

In 2009, she won gold at the Maccabiah Games in women's foil. In 2014, she won the European Games Baku Senior Women's Foil Qualification Tournament in Budapest, Hungary. She took 24th at the 2015 European Senior Women Foil Championships in Montreux, Switzerland, and 31st at the 2016 European Senior Women Foil Championships in Torun, Poland. Ranked 9th in the world in 2016, she qualified for the Rio Olympics through the Championnats De Qualification Europeans on April 16, 2016, in Prague, Czech Republic.

However, the Israel Olympic Committee applied higher standards than the International Olympic Committee, and she was not allowed to fence at the 2016 Summer Olympics.