A 2011 Junior World Team member, Will Spear earned his first Junior World Cup medal on Sunday at the… Read

Three-time Senior World Team member Daryl Homer opened the international season with a 14th place… Read

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Nearly 100 athletes from seven nations are scheduled to compete in the Sunstate Mechanical Junior… Read

Cool picture of James Williams shot by Nigel Barker After the Portland NAC we caught up with James Williams.  Unfortunately, the interview failed to get published in a timeline manner, so here it is a little late. James and the rest of the US Men’s Saber fencers are off to Plovdiv this weekend for a Grand Prix event.  The US team is 20 points ahead of Canada for the zonal spot in Olympic Team Qualification. Although #2 Aldo Montano is not fencing in this event, the Italian team should prove strong and the US fencers will all have to fence out of pools as the top US fencer is 18th ranked Daryl Homer.  James Williams is currently ranked 24th. On Monday, we’ll update the Olympic qualification rankings based on the weekend’s World Cup events.  In the meantime, enjoy this interview with James. Congratulations on winning the Portland North American Cup – How does it feel? I feel really excited. It is always an honor to win such a large competition. It was a step, albeit a small one, closer to qualification. I hope it will give me confidence as we head into the World Cup season and the final leg of our Olympic qualification. What were the keys to your victory in Portland? This is always a tough question for me, especially since I haven’t watched the video tape yet.  Without some luck nothing is possible, but we must discount it and analyze that which we can control. I can say that Yury has been working very intensely with the guys and me.  I’ve also been concentrating on my footwork and working to improve my lunge. After 16 years of fencing i found my lunge still needed work. There were a lot of upsets at this competition amongst the Olympic contenders, notably, Tim Morehouse, Daryl Homer, Luther Clement and Ben Igoe all were out in early rounds and you also struggled in your round of 32 match trailing 7-1 and 12-9. How do you explain the outcomes? I would first say that while everyone was shocked to see so many upsets, these young fencers deserve a lot of credit.  I saw most of them at the National Training Camp last month and can vouch for the strong work ethic that Eli Dershewitz and Jonah Shainberg and a lot of these young guys have.  I fenced Rhys Douglas (who defeated Daryl Homer in the round of 32) at the end of 2010 and he and his brother Ewan have improved drastically as well.  This is a very strong group of fencers and we were all happy to see how hungry they are and how hard they fight for touches. On the other side of the coin, I think we were all very nervous at this competition and put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform.  I was personally very nervous when I saw the direct elimination tableau and started worrying about whom I was fencing instead of how I was going to fence and that impaired my fencing in the early rounds.  While you can’t put yourself on the team with NAC results, you can certainly knock yourself off.  On any given day, anyone can beat anyone else. If the higher seeded fencer always won, there would be no need to fence the tournament! We train very hard but our training is more geared towards world cup competitions than NACs and I think that can be a challenge as well, but at the end of the day, we still need to overcome this to make the Olympic team.  Tim and Daryl know that they are responsible for not performing to their potential at this tournament.  This is a valuable lesson and will motivate them to perform better at future competitions. What’s next in the men’s saber Olympic Qualification process? In 10 days we leave for a week long training camp in Romania and go from there to our first world cup in Bulgaria.  We have 3 more world cups after that, at which point the team will probably be decided. Any advice for young fencers with Olympic dreams? I would tell them to keep at it and to avoid getting too low when its bad and too high when its good.

Team USA earned four individual and two team medals in Great Britain this weekend at the Camden… Read

Fencing.net has a press release on this weekend’s Men’s Saber Grand Prix in Plovdiv, Bulgaria and an interview translated into english the French National Coach.  (http://www.fencing.net/forums/thread56470.html) Few days before the GP in Plovdiv we visit with Jean-Philippe Daurelle, France MS National Coach. Q: What is your state of mind three days before the first competition [...]

Brought to you by our friends in France.  The athletes are leading a pretty interesting and creative campaign to grow the popularity of the sport there. Check them out on facebook and “like” there page: http://www.facebook.com/TheFencer.net  

Now, you can wear fencing stuff all day long even outside of training! Introducing ADIDAS new Silver Spring/Summer 2012 collection!  I had a lot of fun shooting the fencing bits for the clothing line although the boots they had me fence in were really uncomfortable.  Great publicity for fencing to be the sporting face for [...]

The U.S. Men’s Foil Team earned a sixth place finish at the Paris Foil World Cup in France on… Read

The U.S. Men’s Epee Team opened the World Cup season with a silver medal finish in Legnano, Italy… Read

Paris proved great for the US. The top 4 qualifying teams remained in the top 4, but an early loss by Japan gives Germany hope. In the Olympic team foil event, the top-4 teams qualify directly to the Olympics followed by the top team in each Olympic zone (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe).  Great Britain is allowed a spot due to being the host nation. The top 4 spots were resorted with Italy climbing to #1 and China falling to 2nd.  Russia’s 3rd place result in Paris puts them within 4 points of Japan for the 4th automatic qualification spot.  As the top European team not already qualified, that doesn’t help Russia directly, but does benefit Germany. If Russia earns another top-4 result and Japan finishes out of the top-4 in the next event, then Russia would be tied with Japan for the 4th spot.  Russia has the slightly better record in world cup competition at this point. Assuming Russia moves up to 4th, that puts Japan as the Asia qualifier, knocking Korea out.  Germany then gains entry as the top European team not already qualified. The United States and Egypt remain qualified from their zones and no other nation is close enough to do anything to their spots. At this point, we’re closing the books on Poland.  They just don’t have a shot being 50 points behind Germany. In short:

Germany should be cheering on Russia. Korea should be cheering on Japan. Poland can still work to ruin someone’s day.

Fencers from Korea, and Germany are going to have to start looking more at their individual results to be able to gain entry for the individual event should their teams get frozen out of the team event.  The individual event is filled first by the top 3 fencers from the team entries, then by the top ranked individuals from countries not already qualified. Here are the current teams qualified for Men’s Team Foil in the Olympic Rankings.  I’ve included Germany and Poland and their points to illustrate where they are in the hunt:

QUAL Name Nationality Zone Pts

1 ITALY ITA Europe 312

2 CHINA CHN Asia 300

3 FRANCE FRA Europe 239

4 JAPAN JPN Asia 236

EU RUSSIA RUS Europe 232

GERMANY GER Europe 223

AM U.S.A. USA Americas 200

AS KOREA KOR Asia 172

POLAND POL Europe 170

HOST GREAT BRITAIN GBR Europe 157

AF EGYPT EGY Africa 147

Next events:

La Coruña – Spain – February 19th Bonn – Germany – March 18th

The full spreadsheet is available here.

Despite flat performances, most of the top qualifiers remained in place. The top seeds this weekend came out flat and did nothing to solidify their spots while two fencers on the outs made big moves to displace their countrymen.  Ulrich Robieri (FRA) makes an appearance taking 2nd at the event.  Does he even have a shot at qualification? What else is going on with the qualification slots? There was a shuffling of the order for the top-12 in the men’s epee qualifications and some flip-flopping among the French and Italian teams.  Other than two spots, all of the current qualification standings held, including the zonal qualification slots. Paulo Pizzo (ITA) retains the top seed in Olympic qualifying at 29 points ahead of Kauter and Heinzer who are tied at 123 points.  All of this despite 5 of the top 9 going out in the round of 64.  In fact, only 3 fencers in the top 20 in Olympic qualification made the top-8! Not surprisingly, the two fencers that made the most out of the flatness of the field were the two who needed it most.  Matteo Tagliariol used his top-8 finish to edge ahead of Alfredo Rota for the 2nd Italian qualifying slot.  Rota went out in the 32 and now sits just one point behind Tagliariol for the 12th and final Olympic qualifying spot. Yannick Borel (FRA) also displaced his countryman by taking 3rd place.  He was 15th in qualifying and jumped up to 10th, sitting 10 points ahead Ronan Gustin. Coming out of nowhere in this event was Robieri.  He took 2nd at the event, but has only 57 qualifying points.  In order to qualify, he would need a minimum of 103 points (assuming that the lower half of the current qualifiers all lose their T-64 matches in the next 3 world cups.)  That means he has to turn in continual podium finishes, the top half of qualifiers have to do well and the bottom half have to lose in the 64 or 32.  Not a great formula for success. The zonal spots in the Americas and Asia actually look a bit more open to competition now than they did before.  Neither Buisvert-Simard (CAN) nor Fernandez (VEN) did anything of note in the event, which leaves only 8 points between them for the 2nd American zonal spot.  One top-16 result in the next 2 events can decide that race. Soren Thompson and Seth Kelsey are both on track to qualify, but are close enough to the edge that they really need to make sure they’re keeping pace with the pack.  Soren is still top-16 in the FIE rankings, so gets a bye to the 64 and guaranteed points.  If either can make the 16 in Doha, that should secure their spots. A similar situation exists in the Asia zone.  Alimzhanov (KAZ) earned no points at this event and will have to fight out of pools going forward, while Jung (KOR) is 16th, so gets a bye to the 64 at the next event, guaranteeing him 3 points.  That leaves the door open for Goujie Li (CHN) who is sitting at 68 points.  It’s an 11 point gap, but a 32 at Doha would put him on pace to steal the zonal slot from Alimzhanov. Here are the current qualifiers as of Legnano:

Name Nationality Zone Qualification Path Points

PIZZO Paolo ITA Europe Top 12 152

KAUTER Fabian SUI Europe Top 12 123

HEINZER Max SUI Europe Top 12 123

VERWIJLEN Bas NED Europe Top 12 120

THOMPSON Soren USA Americas Top 12 104

GRUMIER Gauthier FRA Europe Top 12 103

PARK Kyoung Doo KOR Asia Top 12 100

LIMARDO Ruben VEN Americas Top 12 98

IMRE Geza HUN Europe Top 12 97

BOREL Yannick FRA Europe Top 12 95

FIEDLER Joerg GER Europe Top 12 91

TAGLIARIOL Matteo ITA Europe Top 12 86

NOVOSJOLOV Nikolai EST Europe EU 1 84

BOCZKO Gabor HUN Europe EU 2 82

ALIMZHANOV Elmir KAZ Asia AS 1 79

JUNG Jin Sun KOR Asia AS 2 76

KELSEY Weston USA Americas AM 1 73

BOUZAID Alexandre SEN Africa AF 1 73

BOISVERT-SIMARD Hugues CAN Americas AM 2 60

ALAA EL DIN FAYZ Ayman EGY Africa AF 2 43

Last Out

ROTA Alfredo ITA Europe Max Per Country 85

GUSTIN Ronan FRA Europe Max Per Country 85

Next events: Doha Grand Prix (1.5 x points) – Feb 10th Tallin World Cup (1 x points) – March 2nd Paris World Cup (1 x points) – March 16th

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