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Content warning: some mentions of COVID and sporting injury
The 2019 Fencers Club London Open does feature one of my better stories of utter sporting terribleness - it is down in the books as "the time I lost to someone with a broken rib".
Now J is one of my favourite nemesises (and is aware I call her that) but still.
Even now, nigh on 6 years later, I can still tell you what I did wrong - I rushed it, I pushed too hard, I chased the victory. I learnt from it.
As you can imagine, at the time, I was livid with myself.
Other than uselessness on the fencing front, it was a nice competition. It was at Rickmansworth School, or, to quote what I said to the Italian fencer who was on the same tube as me, "I don't think I'm rich enough to be here." For someone of my political persuasion, I spend too much time at posh schools.
One of the fencing parents ran the food and it was delicious bacon bun time (it remains an all-time best fencing food).
We will skip over L offering me space in his flat, forgetting that he was in France that weekend, sending me his spare keys in the post and banning me from putting the "cheese wedge" (stinky fencing kit bag) in his flat, me having to put it in the loft space, there being engineering work so I had to go a very round about route there and back and a train delay on the way back.
The bonus was because the competition was on the Sunday, I got to go to the Smoke and Mirrors exhibition (https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/W_vuwBQAACoA_SY2), which I really enjoyed. I really enjoy magic, but I was brought up with the Houdini and Conan Doyle story so whenever anyone claims ghosts or the supernatural, I go looking for the trick.
So, if we ignore the fencing, I had a great time, and even that wasn't too bad, because I'd deliberately done the FCL as a stretch competition. FCL the club is one of the best fencing clubs in the country so you can imagine what the standard was like.
It was also there that C told me my excuses for not doing the Welsh Open weren't good enough, which is why the Welsh Open (3rd strongest competition in the country) was the first competition I did after COVID. Too many fencers are aware that 'I dare you' works on me.
J, and her broken rib, do highlight that you can't trust athletes to make sensible play/no-play decisions. In fencing, at our level, we're amateurs. So no prize money (FCL is actually one of the few exceptions to this).
We pay to attend.
We pay transport and any necessary hotel costs because the competitions (unless you are a sabreur) start too early to get there easily.
And, for me and J, we did this, knowing we're not going to win.
J is a sensible person, normally. She's a vet tech (guess how the rib bust). She needs to be able to move. She really ought to have been at home recovering.
But she wanted to fence.
Imagine what that's like if you're a young man or woman with money on the line. That sort of decision should be in the hands of someone whose not got money on the line, because Bloodgate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodgate) showed that team doctors can be suborned.
The 2019 Fencers Club London Open does feature one of my better stories of utter sporting terribleness - it is down in the books as "the time I lost to someone with a broken rib".
Now J is one of my favourite nemesises (and is aware I call her that) but still.
Even now, nigh on 6 years later, I can still tell you what I did wrong - I rushed it, I pushed too hard, I chased the victory. I learnt from it.
As you can imagine, at the time, I was livid with myself.
Other than uselessness on the fencing front, it was a nice competition. It was at Rickmansworth School, or, to quote what I said to the Italian fencer who was on the same tube as me, "I don't think I'm rich enough to be here." For someone of my political persuasion, I spend too much time at posh schools.
One of the fencing parents ran the food and it was delicious bacon bun time (it remains an all-time best fencing food).
We will skip over L offering me space in his flat, forgetting that he was in France that weekend, sending me his spare keys in the post and banning me from putting the "cheese wedge" (stinky fencing kit bag) in his flat, me having to put it in the loft space, there being engineering work so I had to go a very round about route there and back and a train delay on the way back.
The bonus was because the competition was on the Sunday, I got to go to the Smoke and Mirrors exhibition (https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/W_vuwBQAACoA_SY2), which I really enjoyed. I really enjoy magic, but I was brought up with the Houdini and Conan Doyle story so whenever anyone claims ghosts or the supernatural, I go looking for the trick.
So, if we ignore the fencing, I had a great time, and even that wasn't too bad, because I'd deliberately done the FCL as a stretch competition. FCL the club is one of the best fencing clubs in the country so you can imagine what the standard was like.
It was also there that C told me my excuses for not doing the Welsh Open weren't good enough, which is why the Welsh Open (3rd strongest competition in the country) was the first competition I did after COVID. Too many fencers are aware that 'I dare you' works on me.
J, and her broken rib, do highlight that you can't trust athletes to make sensible play/no-play decisions. In fencing, at our level, we're amateurs. So no prize money (FCL is actually one of the few exceptions to this).
We pay to attend.
We pay transport and any necessary hotel costs because the competitions (unless you are a sabreur) start too early to get there easily.
And, for me and J, we did this, knowing we're not going to win.
J is a sensible person, normally. She's a vet tech (guess how the rib bust). She needs to be able to move. She really ought to have been at home recovering.
But she wanted to fence.
Imagine what that's like if you're a young man or woman with money on the line. That sort of decision should be in the hands of someone whose not got money on the line, because Bloodgate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodgate) showed that team doctors can be suborned.
