Senior European Championships, Day Minus One

On Sunday morning I needed to be registered and accredited for the competition by 10am to confirm my entry into the competition. I met Nuala, the IAFF secretary, and Tom, the IAFF Chairman, in their hotel, Sofitel, which was just round corner from the Novotel, at 9am. Nuala is on the committee of the European Fencing Confederation and both herself and Tom were paid for by the EFC to be there.

We got a Taxi to the venue, the Topsporthal, to make sure we would be there before the registration closed. I dropped my gear into weapons check as soon as possible and started the long wait for it's return. It was a very impressive venue, the likes of which is sorely needed in Ireland. With a versatile indoor athletics venue as well as excellent warm-up and training facilities. A running track ran underneath the entire perimeter of the stands and a sceond large hall (larger than most in Ireland) provdided additional versatile space, in this case used to hold the over-spill of pistes from the main hall.

The weapons would not be ready till after two so we return to the town centre for lunch. We had lunch in a café near the hotel where we were joined by Tom's wife Anne. I'd decided to return to the venue at 3pm on the athlete's bus to collect my gear and do some light warm-ups and footwork before the competition the next day.

My equipment all passed and I went about doing some footwork, blade-work and stretches, needless to say all by myself.

My intention was to return on the 4.30pm bus back to the hotel. Around that time I returned to the reception of the venue but it appeared that there was only a bus coming to the venue at 4.30pm. In fact there was only two buses returning to the hotels all day - one set at 3pm and one set at 8.30pm. This ridiculous and wholly impractical bus timetable was to persist for the rest of the week.

A large group of other competitors had made the same mistake with the timetables and now a large amount of taxis was trying to be organised by one of the volunteers at reception. To annoy people further, the four buses were sitting in the car-park doing nothing. The group waiting for taxis grew irate as the Russians did their usual trick of arriving after everyone else and skipping in the queue. Pretty soon the Eastern Europeans were angry at the taxi drivers, the receptionist was angry at the Eastern Europeans and everyone was pissed-off with the Russians. The receptionist called the organisor of the buses and refused to do anymore.

Eventually the transport organisor arrived and arranged for one of the buses to leave for the town centre. They refused however to drop us at the Novotel however and dropped us instead at the Hotel Ibis 15 minutes walk away.

That evening Siobhán Byrne, our women's sabreur, arrived that before Dinner on a train from Frankfurt. Her coach, Naslimov, was also at the tournament, he declined an invitation to dinner but suggested we mind bring Marina, a American student of his, who was sharing a room with Siobhán. This seemed to be news to Siobhán, although she didn't mind at all as she was a friend of hers, and I have to say that my first impressions of this highly respected coach was that he was somewhat odd to say the least.

We went for Dinner in a restaurant by the canal that was very pleasant. I needed to get up very early for the competition the next morning but the meal dragged on somewhat mainly because of the excruciatingly slow service. We eventually returned to the hotel at around 10.30pm and I went straight to sleep since my weapon was due to start at 7.45am the next morning.