Bittersweet results for IC Fencing Men's 1st

Fencing

Men’s 1st 135 ULU 1st 74 Men’s 1st 114 Cambridge 1st 107 Men’s 1st 101 Bristol 1st 100 Men’s 1st 98 Oxford 1st 98* (*Oxford win the match on weapons)

Last weekend saw the Imperial College Fencing Club Men’s 1st team travel to Oxford for their first Southern Premiership weekend tournament. An early start (too early for some) meant leaving the Union at a time when most people are still in bed. After picking up a couple of wayward sabreurs the minibus made its way up the M40 towards the inhospitable climes of the Oxford cricket school, where the matches were to be played.

The anticipation was tangible; the team are current defending champions of the BUCS competition and had a reputation to uphold. Unfortunately, the vagaries of graduation and years abroad had left them bereft of a couple of talented epeeists. The new epee team of Harry Gulliver, John Ashcroft and Chris Gilliam was as yet untested – how would they fare? The foil had seen some changes too, with fresher Glen Ostacchini making a place for himself and Indy Leclercq returning from a year abroad to join Ed Collier and Chris. Sabre remained unchanged, thankfully, and the team knew they could count on captain Didier Nohlmans, Henry Gann and Maiyuran Ratneswaran to crush the opposing teams.

IC’s first match was against ULU, who turned out to be a shadow of their former selves. Lacking some key fencers, their second place in the league last year seemed a long way away as first the sabreurs, then the foilists and finally the epeeists came away with comfortable victories. Final score: 135-74 to Imperial.

The fencers knew, however, that the real challenge was yet to come, with Cambridge, Bristol and Oxford all having turned up with strong teams. Cambridge were next, and having won the toss Imperial determined the order of fencing: sabre, foil and epee for last.

The sabre ended up being a relatively comfortable victory, although lapses of concentration towards the end of the match cost them some silly points. Imperial went into the foil with an almost twenty point lead. Some strong opposition from Cambridge, along with some harsh refereeing by one of their fencers, meant Imperial lost the foil by a few points to go into the epee with a sixteen-point cushion. This meant that the epeeists had to score at least thirty points for IC to put the match away. Doing their best to hold things up, the boys in white nevertheless started dropping points here and there, and at one point came very close to losing the overall lead. Coming into the final bout, Harry was but two points ahead overall. He produced a blistering performance to hit the magic number of points and even won his match in the process, meaning that Imperial came away with a seven-point victory, 114-107. As the team split up for the night, the designated BK MVP of the day was duly deemed to be Harry.

The following morning saw a 9am start versus Bristol in the cold cricket school. While there was reason to be cautious, as Bristol have always been a strong team (carried by their star foilist), the consensus was that they were beatable. Foil started the match, doing very well to come out with a slim deficit after the match – considering the strength of the Bristol foilists). The sabreurs then did their thing and re-established a strong lead, Henry in particular producing a strong performance to walk all over the Bristol fencers.

As before, the outcome of the match was to be decided in the epee; as before, it was a nerve-wracking affair. The epeeists started out with an 11-point lead which they had to maintain to win the match. As it went on, though, Bristol asserted their dominance and the Imperial fencers saw their lead shrink. Once again it came down to Harry, anchoring epee, to win his match against Matt Billing, Bristol’s best fencer, to be able to win the match overall. Both sides were feverishly tallying the scores to figure out when the match would be put beyond doubt. Unfortunately for Bristol, they were doing the sums a bit too feverishly and got them wrong (or, according to them, ‘misread the score sheet’) – meaning that when the final three minutes were up, both sides started cheering, to mutual bewilderment. In the end, though a team with two physicists and a mathematician were always going to get it right and IC came off with a one point victory, 101-100.

The final match against Oxford was to prove a clash of titans, as both teams had won all their matches and had been on form all weekend. Having lost the toss, sabre went first, producing a comprehensive win to put Imperial almost thirty points ahead. The foilists then went ahead to try and put the match beyond reach; however what started off as a closely-fought match crumbled into a ten-point win for Oxford. It was up to the epeeists to save the day. In the most nerve-wracking moment of the weekend, they had to reach twenty-seven hits to be able to claim victory for the team… but it was not to be. The final score was an agonisingly close 45-26 to Oxford, meaning the two teams were perfectly tied, 98-98. The fact that Oxford won two weapons, though, meant that victory was theirs, and a dejected Imperial team made their way back down to London.

Overall, the weekend was a positive result, though, and the the motivation to win everything at the next premiership weekend is greater than ever.