The Long Road To, And Back From, Damigny

This was my first taste of French competition, how would it compare to that which I have experienced before?

As I may have mentioned before all the club members at US metro have been very welcoming to me. I already feel like part of the team and although my French is at times abysmal, my ability to laugh, smile or nod when appropriate is becoming quite awesome.

Damigny is a small Normandie Village just outside the slightly larger town of Anecon. The Senior Sabre competition was to be held on Sunday and there was to be a Veteran competition in Foil and Sabre on the Saturday. As it happens, both mini-buses that were hired to take the team there on Saturday evening were full. Hence, I took a lift from Jean-Francois (Jef) on Saturday early Saturday morning since he was entering the veteran's competition.

It was a two and a half hour journey each way with four French people with me sitting in the middle of the back seat (I got stuck with the worst seat there and back). The absolute exhaustion I felt from trying to listen to what each of them was saying, cannot be adequately described. That is not to mention the fear I felt when it seemed likely that one of them was going to ask me a question. Eventually I fell asleep to avoid having to concentrate on the French.

I got to take in the full weekend of competition and see how they do things over here. Not surprisingly, they do things well. It was quite a packed hall with 16 pistes and a seperate finals piste and bleechers in a seperate hall. Everything ran on time, the refereeing was for the most-part excellent (no fencers refereeing at all), snack and dinning facilities were excellent. Everything you could want from a tournament.

The day of veteran's competition dragged on but ran smoothly enough. That evening we stayed in the local campanile and watched France against New Zealand. Jokes were exchanged before the match generally at the expense of Ireland and Irish rugby but these tapered off as France were annihilated by the All Blacks save for a single wobbly drop-goal. I kicked myself when I didn't learn about Ireland's fantastic victory against the Spring-bocks until after we had all left for our rooms - I could have really made friends then.

Sunday morning, there were 119 in Men's sabre including a few French internationals and one or two ex junior world champions, apparently. I was very nervous going into my first few poule matches. I really wanted to impress my new team mates. Added to this the ability of my opponents and I had an abysmal start to the tournament losing to my first two opponents. My first win on French soil came against a slightly awkward left-handed fencer who I dispatched quite easily. Glad to get this under my belt I started fencing slightly better but I could only manage one other victory. I knew that a measly two victories wasn't goig to get me an easy draw.

Realistically, I should have been looking for 3 wins from my poule out of a possible six and on a good day I feel I could have got 4, which could have seen me quite well placed. On the day though the novelty of this new environment and wanting to impress my teammates got the better of me. In the Last-128 I faced another left handed fencer who ranked 43rd after the poules. I started the match well and took an early lead, in fact I was leading going into the break 8-7.

During the break one of the coaches from metro advised me, in French. Most of the break was spent with me trying to figure out in my head what was said to me. The basic gist of it was hit him on the head, not the wrist but I couldn't be certain. Anyhow, I can't say that this momentary confusion played any part. After the break, I lost concentration somewhat, my opponent capitalised and ran out 15-11 victore. I was pretty gutted.

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To give this some sort of context the British no. 1 Neil Hutchinson went out in the Last-64. Alexander Woog (my US Metro teammate) and no. 5 in France went out in the last-16. Evangelos Efstathiou a US fencer and in the top 100 in the world went out in the last-16 also. It was a high standard of competition.

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My final rank of 85th was very disappointing, not least because a top 50% result would have got me some money at the end of the season, but in the overall scheme of things has only strengthened my resolve to work harder. After all I have only been here for a week and I didn't come here to show off how good I am to the French but to improve through fencing them. Week 1 over and I feel I've accomplished quite a lot.

I'll keep you posted...

Salut!