VANCOUVER (CP) - Slowly, maybe for the last time, Laurie Shong stuffed equipment into his bag.

"I'm done," the 33-year-old Vancouver native said after a first-round loss to Germany at a World Cup fencing event Sunday ended Canada's hopes of sending a men's epee team to this summer's Olympic Games. "I feel bad for the rest of the team. We had a big opportunity to qualify. I hope they can stick around for another four years and have another shot at it."

The Canadian men, ranked 14th in the world, needed a top-four finish at this weekend's Peter Bakonyi Epee International World Cup to earn a ticket to Athens.

Losses to Germany and the United States left Canada last among the 13 teams in the event, held at the University of British Columbia.

The United States won the Americas Zone berth.

Individually, none of the men managed to reach the Canadian Olympic Committee standard of two top-16 finishes in designated World Cup competitions over the last two years.

Seven men managed one top-16 finish, including Tomy Linteau of Quebec City, who placed 16th in Saturday's individual competition.

"I didn't have any pressure (Saturday) so I just fenced," shrugged Linteau, 27, who works part-time as a cook to finance his fencing.

Alfredo Rota of Italy won the individual competition.

Canada's women's epee team qualified for Athens at a World Cup event in Tauberbischofsheim, Germany, earlier this year.

For Shong, it was a bitter-sweet homecoming. A former age-group world champion and three-time Olympian, he wanted to help earn Canada a team berth in his home city.

"I would have liked to have made it with this group," he said, sweat dripping off his face. "The last time I went to the Olympics it was as an individual.

"I would have rather gone as a team. It's a lot more fun."

Rounding out the Canadian team Sunday was Tarsch Bakos of Saskatoon and Charles St. Hilaire of Quebec City.

Shong qualified for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona in both fencing and modern pentathlon an experience he called "kind of neat."

"I was young and so taken by the whole thing," he said. "I did the pentathlon and that didn't go very well for me.

"I had another week to get mad at myself for the fencing and had a great result."

Shong placed 14th in Barcelona and the Canadian team finished sixth.

After suffering a serious knee injury in a near-fatal car accident in 1993 Shong concentrated on fencing. He went to the 1996 Atlanta Games as an alternate and placed 26th at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Shong will decide later this month if he will compete in more World Cups this year, but knows he won't be back next season.

He currently lives in Budapest with his girlfriend, fencer Aida Mohamed, who is ranked third in the world and is a potential medallist in Athens.

Shong may pursue a career in acting. He's already done some movie work in Hungary and has appeared in television commercials there selling coffee, shampoo and cell phones.

While Shong is ready to retiree, Linteau is planning for the 2008 Games.

"I think this is another source of motivation," he said. "I don't think the next few years we will do the same mistakes again.

"We'll have better planning. I think we'll have a better chance than this year."

Money problems forced the Canadian men to stay home from some World Cups in 2000. This gave Canada a low world ranking and resulted in the men facing fencing power China five times in a row during World Cups this year.

"Some guys gave up everything this year to try and qualify," said Danek Nowosielski, high performance director for the Canadian Fencing Federation. "It's frustrating because you know you have the bodies to do it.

"Because you're not able to do certain things you can't qualify."

Linteau said the federation has learned a lesson.

"The thing is, to qualify for the Olympics it's not just a year before," he said. "We must work at the beginning of the first year of the four years to have a ranking."