No rest for Ed
Saturday saw the Leon Paul Open in London, which was senior open but also a junior ranking competition, with 79 fencers entered.
Ed had a Poule of 7. He beat Kiron Austin of Newham Swords and Henry Youngblood of Salle Boston 5-1. He was pleased to beat Mexican Diego Marroquin (currently 41st in the world U20 rankings) 5-4, but then unexpectedly came unstuck with a 3-5 loss to Mark Evgenev of Salle Boston. Ed’s inner Incredible Hulk was invoked and he followed that up with a 5-0 win over the Poule’s top seed, Charlie Broughton of Salle Holyrood in less than 28 seconds, with a mixture of counterattacks and remises. He finished off with a 20 second 5-0 victory over Joe Kerr from Cocks Moor Woods Fencing. This put Ed as second seed.
Meanwhile, James was having a tough time in a difficult Poule of 6. He came away with 1 win (5-1 against Kwan Yeung) but took 4 points off strong fencer, Daniel Robinson. While Ed had a bye in L128, James had a 15-5 win over Salle Paul’s Patrick Livingstone.
Then came the first bad draw of the day. James and Ed faced each other in L64, with Ed prevailing. This was followed by the second bad draw, with Ed having to face the 4th ranked GB U20 fencer, Sebastian Pallier in L32. Pallier had not had the best of Poule performances but had picked up his game in the DEs, unfortunately, leaving Ed to finish in 19th place.
The Leon Paul women’s Foil was on Sunday, with guest fencer Serena Patel winning 3 out of 5 Poule fights and getting through to L16, where she went out to bronze medalist Heloise Hardie.