Euro Champs, Day Two - Women's Epee and Men's Foil

Benedict was dropping his weapons in to weapons control on the Tuesday morning, as was Siobhán, so I went with them to the hall.

A tremendous amount of hanging around then followed as the weapons were waited on and we waited to support Philip in the afternoon. I filled in the time inspecting the women's epee, in which the Swedish team were surely the highlight.

Although I was not familiar with his opposition, the general vibe I got was that the men's foil was not an easy competition either - shocking.

A week before his 50th birthday philip was really putting it up himself fight with fencers the majority of whom must have been half his age. I don't know how he felt about his performance but he did seem to be quite tense on the piste. In the end the speed of the other fencers was to be his undoing and he failed to register a victory.

...

Tired from a relatively early start on the day and the ridiculously early start the day before I decided to skip the finals and take a nap in my room. As it turns out I missed probably the most eventful finals but for reasons other than fencing. The weather had been terrible all week and the roof chose to spring a leek just as the finals were being shown on Eurosport delaying the whole thing by about 3/4 of an hour.

Somewhat relieved to have missed a long wait before some finals that I had little interest in, I felt vindicated in my choice of a nap.