Tunisia Day 3: St. Patrick's Day and the Curse of the Irish!

The bus to the venue was early the next morning and having nothing better to do I went down to the venue to watch.

Keeth Smart's gear had never arrived in Tunis from the states so I lent him mine. It was all very amusing to see the Bronx-born former world number one warm-up in the Irish Track-suit and breeches on St. Patrick's day. We all had had a good laugh, that is, up until the Irish colours proved as unlucky for him as they had been for me as he lost out to a Russian in the Last 64.

Just as I had done, he promised he'd pretend he'd never been to Tunisia and particularly not to a fencing competition there.

The competition however went a lot better for some of his team-mates as Morhouse reached the Last-8 and Williams and Hagamen reaching the Last 16.

...

Before the finals there was a break of a few hours so I headed back to the hotel with the American team. There was no buses provided at this stage and we needed to get a taxi back. This proved to be trickier than at first it seemed given the large number of fencers who had the exact same idea and the enormous amoung of luggage in the form of fencing backs this also entailed transporting.

Eventually however I got a taxi with Tim and Jason and we were quite quickly back to the hotel. This was in no small part thanks to our driver, who drove like an absolute lunatic. We ended up arriving before some other members of their team who had left 10-15 minutes before us.

When we reached the hotel we headed for the pool. It was around this time that we got to witness the full fervour of Tunisian customer service. The US team wanted to take a sauna. So, they went through the seperate doors from the pool, downstairs to the sauna. They had already gone down to the sauna when I arrived to find that had got into a bit of trouble. Aparently the sauna was run by a seperate company and they were charging a ridiculous €15 for half an hour use. The US team had walked by the desk since there was no one there but the receptionist had soon arrived and started berrating them for going into the sauna.

One would think it reasonable enough in a supposed five-star hotel to have the sauna included in the price, but no and no she was laying in to them over there apparently "crazy" actions. She was even giving out to myself and Jason the last ones to arrive who were the only ones who spoke French. Even though they had only spent 5 minutes in the sauna and none had decided to stay when they heard the ridiculous price, they were insisting that they all payed. The general consensus however was that they could go make sweet-love to the nearest camel... and eventually nothing came of it. We enjoyed the free swimming pool and soon it was time for me to get back to the venue from where I was to get a lift to the airport.

I took the name of the venue from the poster in the foyer of the hotel and asked the hotel to call me a taxi. I assumed that the hotel would explain to the taxi where I was going, or even the doorman but no and it was a drawn out process which took several phones calls to explain to the driver where the venue but eventually I got there ok.

...

The French and the Russians however, had the strongest teams and they were bound to dominate the tournament. The semi-finals saw Yakimenko Vs. Pillet and Reshetnikov Vs. Anstett. Yakimenko eventually ran out the winner against Pillet and Anstett beat the other, previously unheard of, Russian. In the final, Yakimenko proved too strong for Anstett despite a very close fight and won 15-13.

I have the most part of those matches recorded and I'll post them up when I get a chance.

...

I my back to Paris was uneventful and why I returned from the most miserable St. Patrick's day ever the last thing I needed to hear was that Ireland had missed out on the 6 Nations because of the decision of one stupid Irish video ref and one stupid decision not to go for a penalty...

Ah well there is always next year for Tunisia, the Six Nations and St. Patrick's day...