Samantha Catantan is making sure that her first taste of Olympic action will be very memorable.

Catantan’s long-time coach Roland Canlas revealed that the 22-year-old fencing star will be setting up a training camp in Italy as part of her final push for the Summer Games in July.

Canlas said his ward will be training in the country for two weeks before flying to Venice to work with the members of the Italian national team from 12 to 29 June.

He added that Catantan’s school — the Pennsylvania State University — will be funding her training following a stellar performance in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

“We’ll be here in Manila for around two weeks to train in the morning and evening. The morning training will be all technical lessons like one-on-one while the evening will be 15 hits since it’s a direct elimination in the Olympics,” Canlas said during the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum on Tuesday at the conference hall of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.

“We will leave on 12 June until 29 June for Venice to train with the national team there. What’s great about it is that Penn State will be funding it so we’re grateful to Sam’s school in helping her out.”

Canlas assured that Catantan’s training in Manila will also be grueling.

In fact, she will be pitted against male fencers in the national team to make sure that she will be at par by the time she flies to Italy for the final stage of her buildup.

“I’m going to be pitting her against our guys like Nathaniel Perez when we do 15 hits. That will be part of the program until we leave for Italy,” said Canlas, a former national team fencer.

More than the program, Catantan said she wants to develop consistency in her movements when she begins her campaign on 27 July at the Grand Palais.

“We’re focusing more on the technical side and consistency in strength and conditioning. I’m looking forward to the training camps in Europe,” Catantan said.

Catantan actually takes a page from the playbook of fellow Olympian and former national team teammate Maxine Esteban, who made Italy as her training base.

Esteban trained under the watchful eyes of Italian mentor Andrea Magno, who guided Valentina Vezzali to six Olympic gold medals in team and individual foil events from 1996 to 2012 and to 16 world championships in the same events from 1995 to 2015 while handling the affairs of Japanese, Kuwait and American athletes.

Now, Catantan will have the benefits of both American and European trainings as she attempts to go deep in her campaign at the Summer Games.

Catantan said she hopes that she will not face Esteban early on.

“Growing up, we were rivals and we always faced each other,” Catantan said, referring to Esteban, who is now representing Ivory Coast after the Philippine Fencing Association dropped her from the national team.

“That’s one thing that we don’t want to happen because we were teammates and you don’t want to go against your teammate. We both dreamed of making it to the Olympics.”

But should their Olympic collision happen, Catantan will be focused on fighting for the country — not on their personal rivalry.

“For sure, I’m looking forward to facing them since they are the best in the world and they deserve to be there,” Catantan said.

“It’s a competition. When we’re on the strip, we’re all competitive but we are friends after the competition.”