Sport & Societies

Club captain interview: Men's Fencing

Indy Leclercq interviews Didier Nohlmans

Club captain interview: Men's Fencing

Well, it’s two weeks into the year, and those of you who are part of sports clubs will know that the season’s first fixtures are fast approaching - and how important it is to start off on the winning foot. This week, Fencing Men’s 1st team captain Didier Nohlmans inaugurates our Club Captains interview series. A member of the team that swept to BUCS championship gold last season, he acknowledges that he has pretty big shoes to fill:

“Last year was indeed a very successful year for Imperial fencing, with both the men’s and women’s team becoming BUCS champions, so I have a lot to live up to. The start of the year has been hectic as usual with lots of new fencers- both beginners and more experienced ones.” The club is indeed a big one, attracting a lot of interest from freshers (over 200 signed up for taster sessions at freshers’ fair), and while everyone helps out, the captain does have the time to focus on the competitive side of things: “most of the organisational work is done by our president, Ed Collier, so my main responsibility so far has been picking this year’s first team.”

In order to do this, tryouts were organized last Wednesday. What is the verdict? Can this year’s team emulate its predecessors and become BUCS champions? “Several key first team members from last year have sadly graduated, so we were in desperate need of some new fencers. Luckily, there was plenty of talent at the trials so I’m confident that we’ll have a great team and a good year. Whether we can reproduce last year’s success remains to be seen, as it also depends on whether our opposition have improved - but for now I’m going to say that we definitely have the potential to become champions again.”

In any case, he still has time to fine-tune his team and get them fully prepared for the matches: “The fencing season for the first team starts in Oxford in November with a round-robin tournament in the southern premier league (Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol and ULU). Another round-robin tournament is held in January here at Imperial against the same opposition.”

“After this, all teams progress through to the national knockout stages where we could come up against anyone as far awvay as St Andrews.”

I ask him what he hopes to achieve, and the answer is pretty clear: “All of this culminates in the national BUCS finals, which we are certainly hoping to be at!”

In order to get that far, the team is going to have to train hard, on top of the twice-weekly sessions organized by the Fencing club. According to Didier, “a lot of our team members also train at clubs outside Imperial to build up more experience against different opponents.”

So the objective is fixed, and the date of the BUCS finals firmly penciled into this captain’s calendar. But come on - we want to find out a bit about the people behind the trophies, don’t we? “I’m a physics PhD student, working in the labs down in the depths of the physics building. I came here a year ago and before that I was at Durham for my undergrad.”

All right, sounds fair, anything else? I ask him how he got into fencing, and it turns out there is a bit of a story in there: “I used to play football at school, but when I was 13 I had an operation on my toe and couldn’t play for a few weeks, so I thought I’d give fencing a go instead. I’ve never looked back since!” Didier is a sabreur, which means he fences with a sabre, one of three different fencing weapons. While they each have their own characteristics, and none is truly “stronger” than the other two, there is a fair bit of banter between practitioners of the different weapons [Editor’s note - as a foilist, sabre just seems to me like two people crashing into each other with their swords - totally unrefined] I ask him why he got into sabre rather than epée or foil, the other two weapons.

“Quite simple...all my friends were doing it. I was lucky enough to be at a school where the training for sabre was particularly good so it was a natural choice for me.” Ah, good old peer pressure. Well, it means ICFC have a great sabreur and competent captain amongst them this season, so it’s not all bad.

Any last thoughts before letting the good students carry on with their Friday pint? “Actually, when I was captain of the Durham fencing team, we came down to fence Imperial for the BUCS quarter finals and got thoroughly destroyed. Luckily I’ve now changed allegiances!” Rightly so. Come on Imperial!