Imperial Fencing keep their run of victories intact

It’s a Saturday morning in Cambridge as Imperial Fencing’s first men’s team arrive at the sports venue. Ahead of them lays their first BUCS weekend of the year, with matches against University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Bristol University and University of London Union (ULU).

They’re first up against Oxford, starting with foil. With Chris Gilliam, Robert Shaw and Ed Collier on the team, they start fencing an even match, struggling to keep a few hits lead. Robert unfortunately manages to injure himself and is replaced by the reserve Maiyuran Ratneswaran, and despite the accident they win with 4 hits. Whereas the epeeists, Marcello Colombino, Ed Gilhead and Miles Gandolfi, also struggle a bit in their match but win it in the end, the sabreurs, Maiyuran, Henry Gann and Camille van Hoffelen, show their standard and easily win with 45-19.

They continue in the same manner against Bristol, which is followed by a victory in epee. On the other hand, Bristol didn’t managed to get their full team there, considering that it was still before the start of term, and had only foilists as representatives. To compensate, these foilists proved themselves a bit too strong for the Imperial team, collecting a victory after a steady lead.

Two matches down, two to go and summing up the results, Imperial stands strong with two overall victories. Last opponent for the day is Cambridge, and even though our foilists have to see themselves beaten once again after a hard fight, the sabreurs make it up by swiping the piste and winning by 45-15. As the epeeists take their turn, they find themselves facing a situation similar to the foilists, with one difference: they half way through the match know that they’ve already won overall, thanks to the sabreurs.

Only ULU was left for Sunday, giving the team a sleep in as an early reward . Once on the piste the sabreurs repeate their success from the day before. The epeeist follow their example, and as they reached the last match they had a chance of getting an even better result than their friends. The score being 40-10, Marcello gets a sudden blackout and for a second, the team wonders what is happening as he loses 10 points before pulling himself together and finishing it off. The foilists were running up against a much harder task, the ULU team consisting of only fencers from UK top-5, and though fencing well find themselves defeated.

Even though the journey home included troubles with the trains, the thought that all matched had been won kept them in a good mood. With only a couple of weeks to the next round, the last weekend of January at Ethos, it contributed to some extra confidence as well as a good start of the term and the year.