Double BUCS Fencing Champions

Imperial Fencing’s first teams came to the BUCS Championships semi-finals with an amazing season in the bag. Both of the teams were undefeated in their leagues and had confidently gone through their knock out rounds. In everyone’s mind were the double silvers from last year, where both men and women were close to grabbing the gold but in the end were defeated. For the women this year was of extra importance, having ended up second two years in a row.

Starting the semi-finals the ladies faced Durham University, the team Clare Harding (Imperial sabreur), used to fence for. It was already known that Durham had a strong sabre team, but were not as strong in the other weapons. As they had won against Oxford University with only a single hit, a team that Imperial had beaten convincingly twice, the girls concluded that they had a fairly good chance. Up on piste first were Hannah Bryars, Outi Supponen and Alice Mitchell, ready to fence foil. No one from the Durham team was an actual foilist, which meant that even though there was nervousness involved our team could win comfortably with 45-12. Epee coming up next with Alice, Charlotte Levin and Emily Bottle, with the goal to simply keep Durham on a score as low as possible to facilitate it for the sabre team. Facing a bit more challenge in this weapon Charlotte managed to hold it fairly alright at the end with the final score 43-38. This meant that the sabreurs Clare, Hannah and Zoe Robinson needed no more than 7 hits to win, a task they accomplished early but then found the opponents one step stronger and lost 33-45.

As the women had advanced to the final with the overall score 121-95, the men were going a similar route. The foilists in the team, Ed Collier, Chris Gilliam and Robert Shaw, had a similar start to the girls as their opponents, University of Edinburgh, had a team consisting of no foilists. They won their match by 45-26, a good index for the others to work with. The epeeists Marcello Colombino, Ed Gilhead and Miles Gandolfi met a stronger team then their foil fencing friends and lost by one hit, 44-45, after a thrilling last period. From here it was down to the sabreurs Maiyuran Ratneswaran, Didier Nohlmans and Henry Gann to make sure the men followed the women in to the final. To ensure this they could lose by a maximum of 8 hits. Though, keeping in mind that the team has had 45-15 (victory) as their worst result, no one was really worried. Edinburgh decided to put up a greater fight than any other team so far, and managed to get 29 points. The overall score was 134 – 100 and the foilists found it highly amusing to point out to the sabreurs that their score had been better, always having been the other way around.

The club has had its most successful season ever

In the finals, the men faced St Andrews University and the women Cambridge University. For the women Cambridge were known opponents from the Premier League, with only minor changes to the team, whereas St Andrews were completely unknown to the men. Both had the order foil, sabre, epee and fenced in parallel with the Sport Imperial leaders supporting from the stands. The women won their foil match 45-21 and the men repeated their result from the semi-final: 45-26. From here it continued, sabre being up next. The male sabreurs improved their score from the previous match and won by 45-20, leaving it to their epee team go get one point to get the gold. For the women the challenge got slightly bigger, some of the fencers for Cambridge being unknown. Nevertheless, they stayed strong and won by 45-30, and the women were now 6 hits from becoming champions. From this position, the competition was turned into something different. Both teams would win, anything else would be a massive failure, and the goal was now to win before the other IC team did. The women’s match started a bit earlier than the men’s, meaning that they’d reached 4 hits by the time the guys started. While Alice was trying to get the final hits Marcello was rushing it a bit too much in his excitement. Eventually Marcello managed to score the striking hit and both the leaders from Sport Imperial and both teams started cheering loudly. The girls had another change of fencers before Emily ended the insecurity with another round of cheering. From here, the girls almost gave up in their relief, combined with tiredness and the knowledge of Cambridge being the only epee team they had lost to. As their match finished 39-45 the final was over and the total score 123 – 96 for Imperial. Meanwhile the men were still at the end of their match. This one had been much more even as St Andrews refused to let Imperial win with more than necessary. Challenging them all the way to the end they brought it up to 44 – 44 when Marcello put an end to it and got the final point. With this the men won by 135 – 90 and did it in the best way possible: a clean sweep.

The prize ceremony was a happy moment for Imperial Fencing, collecting many gold medals and smiling broadly at a successful season. In addition to the already impressive double gold Hannah and Maiyuran were awarded woman and man of their respective matches, an award decided by the referees. With the first team together collecting 200 BUCS points the club has had its most successful season ever. Undefeatable.