Australian Fencing Championship 2011

Australian Fencing Championship 2011

I have been away in Sydney for a while, attending the Australian Fencing Championships. I fenced in five events with uneven success (I came 52nd out of 70 in the Open Foil, for example), but a few things made me happy. First, I was able to fence for Western Australia in the Team Foil event as captain of the WA ‘B’ team, which put up a decent performance in going down to a strong ACT ‘A’ team. Next, I came 6th in the Veteran Foil; down from last year’s 2nd, but quite respectable given the strength of the field.

The event I was really concentrating on, the one in which I most wanted to do well, was the Veteran Sabre. I fenced pretty well through the pools and direct elimination bouts and got through to the final. There, I faced an opponent who had beaten everybody else that day, and I had trouble maintaining the same level of performance. Who would come through to be crowned national champion for 2011? Watch the video (YouTube, 3:02 long) of the Veteran Men’s Sabre Final to find out:

I’m on the left. If a red light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a green light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts are fought until one fencer scores ten hits. Link to results.

3 Comments

  1. Nice. I haven’t fenced since college and am still amazed at the agility of the competitors and the visual acuity of the judges. It reminds me of an old joke:

    A snail was walking down the street and a turtle jumped out of a dark alley and mugged him.
    The snail went to the police to report the incident.
    The police officer asked the snail to describe the assailant.
    The snail replies, “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

  2. Am

    Good grief, it’s a small world – I came for the Autocad tips and see fencing (ex-foilist here) by someone from my own state. I’ve probably met you before.

    Your opponent’s strong attacks were no match for your riposts. Nice. I also liked the ‘Putting things back to normal’ post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.