With August drawing to a close it seems like a good time to look at what is happening in September – the traditional start to the fencing season.
One look at the sabre club calendar tells us there is loads (technical term) going on.
The first senior Satellite will take place in Iran
There is a Cadet and Junior A BRC in Nottingham
Welsh fencing hold their closed veterans championships
The Cadet and Junior National Championships take place in Nottingham.
WARNING if you want to represent GB this season at Cadet and Junior you MUST do the Nationals unless you have an exemption.
At senior level you also have the Shropshire Open and the Hampshire Open and the Highland Open
Pisa holds the next IWAS World Cup event and Sofia holds a senior Satellite while many veterans will be enjoying themselves in their biggest event, The Veterans Winton Cup at the same time as the youngsters battle in out at the LPJS in Hertfordshire.
Good luck to everyone. Get those entries in if you haven’t already and don’t forget to send us photos on FB or Messenger or reference us on Insta.
Hi all you keen sabre fencers. We got distracted and have updated the calendar for you.
Those of you who cleverly subscribed so we do all the trawling for you, will have got the updates straight to your email.
The rest of you will probably wise up sometime as this saves you a load of time and effort. Or at least that is the idea.
Does it cost much? No.
How much? Nothing for you as the sabre club has committed financial backing for the next few years.
Isn’t it using donations to the charity which owns it? No.
So, if you want to save yourselves some time please feel free to subscribe to the sabre club calendar and even to put a link to it on your club website. We won’t mind. In fact we’d be rather pleased.
I subscribe to the website and get these posts but don’t get the calendar updates! Why?
Not everyone might want to see the calendar updates so you have to subscribe to that separately using the subscribe button just below the calendar. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t worked out how to do that for you 🙁
With the Women’s individual sabre event kicking off on 17th July at the Fencing World Championships in Cairo, and now that the excitement of the men’s qualification round is over, it’s time to meet the GB Women.
If you like the photos for the men, you should like these ones even more 🙂 we’ve stuck with our policy of using the official photos at the time of writing.
As for the men, let’s go in FIE ranking order.
Caiti Maxwell
Caiti, currently ranked 142 in the World as a Senior and previously as high as 7 as a Junior (2018/19). Caiti is the 6 time British Senior National Champion (2016, 17, 18, 19, 21 and 2022 with no event in 2020), first winning the title in 2016 when she won the British Cadet and Junior National titles as well for a clean sweep. In 2019 Caiti took a stunning Bronze medal in the individual event at the European Junior Championships in Foggia, improving on her L8 finish in Sochi the year before. There’s lots more, but that should give you the basic idea.
This season, Caiti has made one L64 finish at a Grand Prix and two L64s at World Cups but had a very disappointing (for her) European Championships in Antalya, placing only 50th.
Caiti, now 23, will be representing GB at the Senior Worlds for the second time, having also fenced in Budapest in 2019 in addition to appearances 3 times as Junior and twice as a Cadet.
Maria Chart, twice British Junior National Champion and 4 time silver medallist in the Senior Nationals, is now 23 and currently ranked 210 in the World and reached as high as 43rd as a Junior (2016/17). This season Maria achieved 41st at the European Championships in Antalya. Before Lockdown Maria made two L96s at Grands Prix – in Cairo and Seoul in 2019.
Maria represented GB at the Senior World Championships in Budapest in 2019 and at World Championships on 4 other occasions as a Junior and as a Cadet.
Sophia Potter is currently ranked 246 in the World was British Cadet National Champion in 2017 and a bronze medallist at the Senior Championships in 2019, when she also took third place in the Junior Nationals. This season Sophia made the L96 at the Istanbul World Cup in March 22 but was disappointed to have to settle for 54th at the European Championships in Antalya in June.
Sophia, 22 years of age, has represented GB at World Championships three times as a Cadet and a Junior. Cairo will be her Senior World Championship debut.
Much more detail on Sophia’s fencing career can be found in her FIE biog and Ophardt biog. We should acknowledge that Sophia updated her profile on the FIE site, but that came too late 🙂
Alex Davis being shy?
Alexandra Davis is currently ranked 250 in the World and doesn’t have an official picture, a fact which we choose to respect. Alex came close to a L96 this season, finishing 106th at the Athens World Cup.
Alex, now 25 has a best result of 8th at the British National Championships (2021) but did not compete this year. This season Alex has picked up Gold at the Leon Paul Open in London, Silver at Birmingham and Bronze at the RAF Open in Cosford.
Alex will be making her World Championship debut in Cairo having made her European Championship debut in Antalya where she placed 60th.
More details of Alex’s fencing journey can be found in her FIE biog and Ophardt biog
Hi, we’ve been busy updating the calendars for you with what we know so far about the coming season. Juniors looks fairly complete. Cadets – we are waiting a bit as BF are currently updating the GBR calendar. We have added in the Cadet and Junior Europeans as this is currently missing from the BF smartsheet calendar but is know as far as dates go.
Selection points will be added shortly.
For non nominated events you need to apply to enter and we have included links to the required forms.
Hope that is all helpful and apologies to those who subscribe to the calendar for the bombardment with new events as we added them all.
If that is a bad thing please let us know and we can turn off the emails for these major updates. We can’t do it on an individual basis, so sorry about that. We would if we could.
We are actively looking for an even better calendar plug-in to allow you to subscribe by category – Junior, Senior, etc. This one should have done that, but doesn’t and won’t 🙁
Don’t forget to look around the website. Under Fencers you’ll find the different age groups and their specific calendars which all link to the master calendar.
Apologies as I have created some duplicate athlete records by mistake. I will get that rectified as soon as I can. Meanwhile some of you will show up twice so the rankings are not quite right.
Monday 13 June saw 6 sabre events take place at the Challenge Wratislavia in Poland.
The highlight for GBR was Jayden Woo’s GOLD MEDAL in the U11 Boys. PDFA clubmate Bobby Marsh made the quarter finals, coming in 6th and Ted Fisher, also of PDFA came 9th out of 40 fencers. Jayden’s performance was particularly impressive as he won his semi final 8-0 and the final 8-3 having won all his poule fights.
There were no GBR entries among the 22 U11 Girls.
At U11 the boys and girls fence to 4 in the poules and to 8 in the Direct Elimination (DE) rounds.
In the U13 Girls Hui Xin Sezille, another EYC champion from PDFA, grabbed a BRONZE MEDAL, only going down by the narrowest of margins: 11-12 in her semi final. Club mate and EYC bronze medalist Emily Fereday could only manage 25th on this occasion in a field of 48.
U13 Boys saw William Buxton (Shakespeare’s) come 10th in a field of 59 with Henry Learner (PDFA) fresh from winning the England Youth Championships on Sunday, coming in 24th. Harry Roberts came in 37th and George Lucas tied for 49th place (both PDFA).
Interestingly the U13s fence to 4 in the poules and to 12 in the DE.
In the U15 Boys, GBRs best result in a field of 81 came from Josh Bryden of Salle Ossian in 10th with Henry Pick of Shakespeare’s Swords 13th also making the last 16. Yoji Hiyama (Shakespeare’s), who won the England Youth Championships on Saturday, came in 26th. In the Last 64, Griffin Manning came in 36th, Calum Kettles 56th (both Salle Ossian), Reuben Brewster 58th and Raphael Bedford 61st (both Shakespeare’s). Guy Lumsden of West Lothian Fencing Club tied for 66th and Miller Hetherington could unfortunately not complete his poules due to injury, having won his first two bouts.
In the U15 Girls there were no GBR entries in a field of 46.
This competition is on all the calendars except the U14 one. Of course it is on the master calendar but it’s also, for example, in the senior calendar and the cadet calendar, as there are prizes for best cadet.
Book your place via Eventbrite now on this excellent course from Chris Farren, following on from his very successful Level 1 course earlier in the season.
You can, as always, get more details on what you need to be a referee on our referees page.
Getting that 16th place finish in Athens has made a difference for the young Women’s senior sabre team.
We say senior, because that’s the age bracket they compete in, but in fact they are rather young. In Athens the ages of the team members were 17,22, 22 and 24 so three of the 4 are still in the U23 bracket. Click on the pictures will take you to the full tables.
Meanwhile the Men remain in 17th place with only Tbilisi taking place so far this season, and GB not fielding a team at the event.
The next events are Istanbul (new on the calendar) for the Women and Budapest for the Men. Both teams fence on 20 March, but over 1,000 km apart and with no official GB coach or support for either event.
However, at least the team entries will be paid for from generous donations to The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation and we look forward to following their progress and cheering them on at both events.
We wish them all the best of luck and great fencing!
You can take the opportunity to explore a bit of how Ophardt integrates nicely and, if you click on the all rankings at the bottom right of the landing page you will see The Sabre Club rankings there too. We have limited ourselves so far to U14 England, U17 and U20 mirror rankings but we have proposals for senior rankings to show you later. We are inviting all GB sabre clubs to sign up to Ophardt. The instructions on how to do so are right here. There are a lot of benefits and registration is free. The Sabre Club rankings are financed by The Sabre Club on your behalf.
