Another busy weekend for our Fernwood fencers
It was another busy week for our Fernwood fencers.
Ethan Dakin was fencing in the U13 men's foil in the Challenge Wratislava in Wroclaw, Poland. He is an U12 so it was a tough competition, with 278 fencers. A little overawed to start, he lost two matches to Polish fencers in the poule, but recovered to beat a Hungarian, a Latvian and a German very convincingly. This left Ethan as equal 98th seed for the DEs. In L256 he comfortably beat a Latvian 12-5 then in L128 demolished the Ukrainian 28th seed 12-1. His progress continued in L64, beating fellow Briton David Bishay from Newham Swords 12.3. He ran out of steam in L32, losing to the excellent Russian 5th seed, Matvei Akimov, 9-12 - a very creditable result, especially since the Russian (quite legitimately) was using an adult size 5 foil. Akimov went on to win a bronze medal and Ethan finished in a fantastic 30th place.
Meanwhile in Leicester, some of our adult fencers were taking part in the Leicester Open. In men's foil on Saturday (from 56 fencers), James Rutherford (in only his second Open competition in over 12 months) lost only 1 fight over two poules to be seeded 9th for the DEs. He comfortably dispatched Daniel Antill in L64 and Pak Sun Li in L32 to come up against left hander Thomas Cann of Lancaster University in L16. The scores mounted up equally and James was unlucky to go out 14-15 to finish in 10th place. Roderick Howlett, in only his third Open, won 3 fights over his 2 poules, taking points in all but 1 fights and coming close in a few more, was 37th for the DEs. He faced 28th seed, Charles Benke of Sutton Coldfield in L64 and was pleased to come out a 15-12 winner. He battled gamely against 5th seed Vinson Wong of St Andrews University and Hong Kong in L32 but couldn't pull off a win, finishing in 32nd place. Edward Campion, in his first Open managed a win in the poules and lost 4-5 in 2 more fights. He had a tough L64 against Nicholas Williams of Nottingham Cavaliers and finished in 49th place. It's fair to say that on a number of occasions our fencers found themselves very frustrated by the refereeing, as there were refereeing exams taking place and a number of the referees appeared to be sabreurs rather than foilists. Finally, Ross Barker took part in men's epee on the Sunday and finished in L64.
In non-competition news, well done to Arthur Eakin who was given an Achievement Award by Bassetlaw District Council this week for his fencing achievements. And finally, Ed Howlett fenced for 6 hours on the go on Saturday as part of King's College London's 24 hour fenceathon in aid of the British Heart Foundation.