Top of the Peck-ing order

Last weekend, fresher Harry Peck competed at the Irish Open, an international men’s épée tournament in Dublin. Although he has fenced regularly at an international level for both the cadet under-17s and junior under-20s, it was Harry’s first senior international event. Starting the day with no ranking Harry ended up in poule one, where he achieved five victories out of a possible six, losing only to Giannotte from Luxembourg whilst defeating fencers from Ireland, Australia, Slovakia and Germany.

The first round acted as seeding for the second round, where Harry found himself in poule six. He won three of five matches, beating competitors from Slovenia, the USA and Poland along the way. The losses came courtesy of a fencer from Singapore and his Brixton clubmate, also in the pool with him, from Bulgaria. After these two rounds Harry found himself in 29th place going into the direct eliminations out of 64 fencers.

In the first round of knockout matches, Harry faced off against French fencer Martelly, seeded 36th. Refereed by Imperial’s own Jamie Simpson, Harry overcame his start to finish incredibly strongly winning the match 15-12. This gave Harry a really tough match in the last 32 of the competition against the 3rd ranked fencer Zorzato from Poland. The result of the match was even clearer than the first, a comfortable win for Harry 15-9, setting him up against his Great Britain and Brixton teammate, Aml Sinclair. Again Harry breezed past his opponent earning himself a place in the quarter final of the competition against the Portuguese fencer Arede. This match proved to be the tightest so far, coming down to a sudden death point. But Harry again proved his ability to be triumphant, winning 13-12. The semi-final against the Romanian Dragomir was a return to form for Harry, winning 15-10 and setting up a nail-biting final against another of Dragomir’s fellow countrymen. The final was back and forth, neither fencer taking a substantial lead. The Romanian led Harry for long periods of time, however our Brit pulled ahead at a decisive time in the match to win 15-13 and take the title of Irish Open Champion! This moves Harry just outside the world top 200. Not bad for someone who has just got into the top ten of Great Britain.

Congratulations Mr Peck!