They came, sword and conquered

The guys started on Saturday, facing Bristol. Their opponents had lost one of their main fencers, but gained an international who held his ground well in foil and epee. Whilst the epeeists found the going tough, losing their match 32-45, the foilists were able to even out the score through a 45-35 victory and then handing it over to the sabreurs to comfortably win 45-13 for an overall victory of 122-93.

Next up they had Cambridge, an opponent which had always been strong but where Imperial had always been able to rely on the sabre team saving the day. However, this time they were reminded that no success should be taken for granted and nothing lasts forever: sabre still won their match but by a margin much smaller than previously since Cambridge had now gained some new faces that were able to put up a challenge. IC’s sabre victory was still by a fairly solid 14 hits, but with Cambridge being significantly stronger in both epee (27-45) and foil (22-45) they had to accept an overall defeat (94-121).

The following day, the girls joined them on the adjacent piste. Ahead of them were the last two matches of the league, against Cambridge and UCL, whilst the guys had only the newcomers UWE left. The latter match was not expected to be a big challenge, based on their performance against the other teams, so it came as no surprise that the sabreurs quickly finished their match (45-17) and left it to the foilists (45-40) and epeeists (45-44) to wrap it up.

Alongside this, the girls started off facing Cambridge, a team they had already beaten away earlier in the season. Both the epeeists and foilists were able to increase their indicators this time, from 43-44 to 45-42 for the former and 34-45 to 38-45 for the latter. This meant that sabre wasn’t under much pressure, but they still had to win the match for us to win overall. The results from last time (45-25) indicated that the task wasn’t going to prove too tough, however all three girls had recently suffered from injuries and illness and struggled especially against Cambridge’s strong Polish sabreur. The rest of the team couldn’t do anything but watch and cheer, but they were not to be disappointed: the match ended 45-38 to Imperial and they were just one match away from a clean sweep.

The epeeists had warmed up to take on UCL, a weapon match that had been lost last time due to some team changes. With a 10 hit victory in memory, UCL seemed confident that it was going to be similar this time and as a result gradually got more shocked as they lost hit after hit, reaching a final score of 45-28. The sabreurs took over and showed no mercy with heroic efforts in the final bouts to produce a stunning score at 45-17, meaning that even if UCL was to win foil by 45-0 they could not win overall. IC’s foilists relaxed, happy to avoid any pressure, whilst UCL were fencing for their own pride. The final result landed on 41-45, a comfortable overall IC victory of 135-90. The two IC teams celebrated the end of the weekend with some pizza, working on preparing the guys mentally for the second leg of the league the following weekend.