Euro Champs, Day Three: Men's Epee and Women's Sabre

My guilt at not getting up at 7am to go watch Benedict will stay with me for the rest of my life. I had intended to get up and run out quick at around 7.45am and head down to catch most of it. I half woke up. Thought I needed an extra 20 minutes sleep, reset my alarm and the next time my eyes were open it was closer to 10.

I'd missed the men's Epee poules when I arrived and Benedict explained how the whole championships had been cruelly torn from his hands by the luck of the gods. In all seriousness though he was unlucky that a beatable Latvian scratched from his poule at the start. He won another match and was agonisingly close to taking another but lost 5-4 and became the third of the Irish team to depart the competition at the poule stage (the entire male contingent).

...

The afternoon it was Siobhán's turn.

In a poule with a Romanian, Hungarian, Polish and Russian fencers and a Belarussian president, one might have seen the writing on the wall. Particularly as the president laughed with his former soviet comrades on the sidelines. The dagger was truly twisted when after fenceing excellently against the powerful Russian fencer Velekya Siobhán was up 4-3 and with the momentum firmly in her favour she seemed set to take the match and guarantee her place in the next round (having already beaten the Hungarian - Peto). Siobhán went for the attack... Velekya went for a parry Quinte... which had barely cleared her navel when Siobhán's attack landed square in her chest. The most blatant mal-parry I have ever seen but the point went to Velekya. In the lottery of a 4-4 match and with momentum suddenly shifted given this heinous error the match went to the Russian.

There was only one match left after that, against her club-mate Louise Bond-Williams, who she had drawn in international competition for something like the 9th time. Matches against an opponent you know so well and who knows you so well are never easily and in a short poule match anyting could have happened. Siobhán has an excellent record over Louise in their last few meetings but it was to be the Brit who came out on top in a very tense match this time. Bond-Williams took the last qualify place in the rankings and Siobhán was left wondering what could have been... sadly.

She fenced well in a very tough poule and as she said herself, that made it so much harder to take the bitter disappointment of going out so soon.

...

At three o'clock I had to make my exit from the tournament. I had a flight to catch back to Dublin that evening from Charles De Gaulle, as I was going to be going to Rachel's graduation the following morning.

For the first time in the week the transport desk proved useful and they organised an entire minibus to take me alone, to the train station. I got a train back to Brussels nearly immediately but I was unable to change my ticket to an earlier TGV because of some pricing condition. After an hours wait on the platform I was shuttled quickly and quietly back to Paris.

I dumped my stuff in the apartment, packed my hand-luggae, changed into my suit, as it was the easiest way to the carry it and headed back to the train out to CDG.

A couple of uneventful hours later I was back in Dublin