Alexander Choupenitch
| Alexander Choupenitch | |
|---|---|
Choupenitch at the 2014 Paris World Cup
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| Personal information | |
| Nickname(s) | Sasha, Chupe |
| Country represented |
 Czech Republic
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| Born |
2 May 1994 Brno, Czech Republic |
| Residence | Livorno, Italy |
| Weapon(s) | foil |
| Hand | right-handed |
| Height | 1.95 m (6 ft 5 in) |
| Weight | 85 kg (187 lb) |
| Club | CS Fides |
| Head coach(es) | Paolo Paoletti |
| FIE Ranking | current ranking |
Alexander Choupenitch (born 2 May 1994) is a Czech foil fencer.
Choupenitch is the son of Belarusian-born opera singers who both worked at National Theatre Brno. The unusual form of his name–Choupenitch instead of Šupenič–is due to the fact that papers issued to his parents for travelling through Europe used a French spelling.
His first sport, basketball, left him frustrated as he seldom got to touch the ball, so his mother took him to the fencing section of Sokol Brno when he was eight. He later learnt that his step-grandmother, Tatyana Petrenko-Samusenko, was a three-time Olympic foil champion for the USSR.Foil was the only option offered at the club, but he later explained that foil is indeed his favourite weapon, being the more realistic and striking the best balance between sabre's speed and épée's tactics. His first coach was Dmitri Romankov, who also trained Belarusian fencer Siarhei Byk.
Choupenitch's other favourite sports are association football and ice hockey. He also plays the piano. He interrupted his studies at the Masaryk University in Brno to focus on sport. In April 2015 he gained a sponsorship from Red Bull.
Choupenitch won his first international distinctions in 2011 with a gold medal at the Cadet European Championships in Klagenfurt and a bronze medal in the Cadet World Championships at the Dead Sea. As a junior, he earned the silver medal in the 2012 Junior World Championships in Poreč and won the Junior World Cup the same year. The next season, he took the silver medal in the Junior European Championships in Budapest and a bronze medal in the World Championships in Poreč; he also finished first of the Junior World Cup for the second year in a row. He won in 2014 the Junior European Championships in Jerusalem and earned a silver medal in the Junior World Championships in Plovdiv after losing the final to China's Chen Haiwei.
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Wikipedia