This will be a long thread

[EagleFlightWoH]

I am probably going to freak everyone out by the time I am done asking questions on this thread. I am going to start with a simple one. Please bear with me and if you think I am a freak when this is all said and done I understand but doubt it will stop me. My first question is, is there an age cap on the olympics for any of the fencing events?

[veeco]

You cannot fence if you are less than 13. After 13, as long as you qualify, you're good to go.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

And at 12 years old, I thought I might make it in.

[dekko]

I am guessing gynastics has different rules.

Washed up by 13.

[kalivor]

I am guessing gynastics has different rules.

Washed up by 13.

Yep, gymnastics it's 16.

[FoilyGeezer]

Uriah Jones was (I think) 51 years old when he went to the Olympics (1974 I believe?).

[Artisan]

Yep, gymnastics it's 16.

Thats chronological age. If the womens gymnasts are sixteen, most sure don't look like it. Some of the Chinese girs look like they're 10 or 12, as do many of the eastern europeans. Either they train the puberty right out of them, or they retard the onset of puberty with drugs. It ain't right I'm tellin' you.

[kalivor]

Thats chronological age. If the womens gymnasts are sixteen, most sure don't look like it. Some of the Chinese girs look like they're 10 or 12, as do many of the eastern europeans. Either they train the puberty right out of them, or they retard the onset of puberty with drugs. It ain't right I'm tellin' you.

Well, I remember watching one Russian gymnast, and thinking that she must be just on the age line (they have to *turn* 16 this year, so I was thinking that her 16th birthday would be in December, or something). Her age? 26 or 25 or something like that.

Most of the Canadian and American gymnasts seem to be in the 18-20 range, I think.

[EagleFlightWoH]

cool, great answers and very helpful, ok 2nd question was going to be what was the oldest person to ever make it into the olympics, but i feel you have pretty much come close to already answering that. So lets move to the third which is very indepth and will probably take some kind of knowledge base or some one with the capabilities to research it. What directions and steps would a person have to take to get from an introductory level fencing class to an olympic event. I am not so much asking what skill level a person would have to aquire, but rather what events or direction would he have to go to and win by point system to be sent to the olympics. Real basic example, take courses, join colledge fencing team, score well in recorded events, try to qualify for world, then qualify for olympics. Please be more specific, and if there is a specific scoring system to getting to the end of your explanation of the route to the olympics, please explain it also. Thank you all so much for your help.
(PS. I will explain more about my reason for questioning as my questions get answered, thats the part that will probably make you think I am a freak) LOL!

[EagleFlightWoH]

an added note, I wanted everyone to know I originally started this thread in the fencing forum by leon paul, he suggested I come here, because of the heavy American traffic, and that you would be able to help me better. So i am doing just that. The questions are the same, but not fully answered yet, as his background is mostly UK oriented.

[Black Jeebus]

I just hope you aren't one of those people that think they can acheive Olympic success by choosing what they think of as an easy sport.

[EagleFlightWoH]

Actually not at all, I find that the requirements of fencing must be very demanding and precise.

[kalivor]

cool, great answers and very helpful, ok 2nd question was going to be what was the oldest person to ever make it into the olympics, but i feel you have pretty much come close to already answering that. So lets move to the third which is very indepth and will probably take some kind of knowledge base or some one with the capabilities to research it. What directions and steps would a person have to take to get from an introductory level fencing class to an olympic event. I am not so much asking what skill level a person would have to aquire, but rather what events or direction would he have to go to and win by point system to be sent to the olympics. Real basic example, take courses, join colledge fencing team, score well in recorded events, try to qualify for world, then qualify for olympics. Please be more specific, and if there is a specific scoring system to getting to the end of your explanation of the route to the olympics, please explain it also. Thank you all so much for your help.
(PS. I will explain more about my reason for questioning as my questions get answered, thats the part that will probably make you think I am a freak) LOL!

OK ... here it goes:

1. Join a local club that has a good reputation for turning out solid beginners, and take whatever introductory course they have.
2. Start going to local competitions.
3. Once you're having a bit of local success, start going to larger competitions (NACs, Nationals)
4. Change clubs (which will probably require moving) so you have a coach that has had international success.
5. Do everything and anything said coach asks you to do.

[EagleFlightWoH]

ok, last question before i lay it all out on the line, is there such a thing as financial aid or sponsor ship for fencers that get quite good at what they do, but unfortunately, do not have the wealth needed to put more time into this, because of the need to work to live? So that they can spend more time perfecting the skills needed to carry them to as close to the top as possable? Remeber, I said quite good at this, meaning, they are not just doing it for a hobby, or getting lucky but rather are proving themselves to be exceptional at this activity, and making a name for themselves in events.

[noodle]

ok, last question before i lay it all out on the line, is there such a thing as financial aid or sponsor ship for fencers that get quite good at what they do, but unfortunately, do not have the wealth needed to put more time into this, because of the need to work to live? So that they can spend more time perfecting the skills needed to carry them to as close to the top as possable? Remeber, I said quite good at this, meaning, they are not just doing it for a hobby, or getting lucky but rather are proving themselves to be exceptional at this activity, and making a name for themselves in events.

keeth smart was working 40 hour weeks up until a short time before the olympics. this includes when he was #1 in the world. there is no such thing as a professional fencer in this country. unfortunately.

[Peach]

ok, last question before i lay it all out on the line, is there such a thing as financial aid or sponsor ship for fencers that get quite good at what they do, but unfortunately, do not have the wealth needed to put more time into this, because of the need to work to live?

In this country, that is called "parents" or "independent means." There is a little bit of financial sponsorship (tiny) available, but it does not meet more than a microscopic fraction of a fencer's expenses.

For many of our Olympic athletes, it was tough. For Tim Morehouse to go as alternate for the team took money he didn't have, and he couldn't work as a teacher while he was training seriously. Keeth Smart took a leave of absence from his job. Sada Jacobson took a year (or was it a year and a half?) off from college.

[Maeve_Mari]

Thats chronological age. If the womens gymnasts are sixteen, most sure don't look like it. Some of the Chinese girs look like they're 10 or 12, as do many of the eastern europeans. Either they train the puberty right out of them, or they retard the onset of puberty with drugs. It ain't right I'm tellin' you.

I think they train the puberty out of them. Plus they are usually the more petite girls - the lifestyle just doesn't work well on bigger girls - take a look at Svetlana. She's nearly starving to death. She's just too big to keep her body up to the routine required for gymnastics.

I think the training it out of them is a permanent hurt too. Look at Cathy Rigby, MaryLo, and Olga Korbet. They never do end up looking too much like women after their years in the gym.

[FoilyGeezer]

The path to get within reach of the top is tough. It means taking lessons, getting ranked, moving up through the rankings by doing more national level competitions and eventually starting to do World Cup events. Though you may be able to swing a deal with some of the retailers and manufacturers to help pay for your equipment, there's still your travel and living expenses, coaching etc. Nobody in the corporate world is falling all over themselves to make fencing a sport where success has any financial ramifications.

[esskreemr]

I think they train the puberty out of them.

Hard intense training can damage the growth plates. In addition, some believe that one of the "triggers" of puberty is dependent on body fat.

IMO, Khorkina was hard to look at. It will be interesting to see if she puts on a little weight.

[EagleFlightWoH]

After I write this I just want you all to know that I will be forever grateful for any help you offer up to me. I am the owner of a Domain, Web Page, and Forum, and am quite aware of the way other people without good intentions can take what I am typing and give me hell for it, even though it would be much easier for them to find another thread to type in that they enjoy or simply to stay out of this thread if they can’t keep themselves from attacking others, no matter what my intentions are. So with that I guess it's time to tell my story: the story of me, a true one.
I will state, that any person that wants to confront me about my story, has every right to and they may contact me in anyway we can agree upon and have me prove the truth of what I say. (Unless they turn out to be a crackpot from my perspective, then most likely I will leave it at a forum level)
I feel it's more important to tell my story in story form, but it is all true, just easier to read and understand with some form of depth.
My Story starts with me being born in Nov. of 1963 (this makes me 40 on my way to being 41 this Nov.) As a child of 5 or 6 I became the city of Downey California’s unsung art prodigy for winning an art show award at the age of 6(Bear with me). (If you want to see a few art pics out of my scrapbook click on these art links http://www.warriorsofhonor.com/image...ookMarvel1.gif or http://www.warriorsofhonor.com/image...ookMarvel2.gif or http://www.warriorsofhonor.com/image...ookMarvel3.gif or http://www.warriorsofhonor.com/image...verReplica.gif )
Any way, by the time I was in my last year of Junior High School in Seattle Washington I had also picked up playing the Clarinet and had become quite good at it. So much so, that I had won an honorary replacement seat in the cities philharmonic. No I never got to play in public with them. I was allowed to come to practice with them every night during that years summer events, and on the condition that any seat became vacant and the first stand in could not replace the missing person, I would get a shot at it. Simply meaning I was very good at an early age, just like I was with my art. This never happened of course. I was highly impressionable and had no self esteem, unfortunately for me I guess, because one of my music teachers humiliated me in front of our school about my playing on such a beat up instrument and he made fun of my families poverty, and so after that day, I set the clarinet down and never picked it up again. By my first year in high school I had joined the swim team and cross country team. My family and I soon found out 2 things about myself. The first was that what ever I set my mind to, I often became so single minded on it and pushed so hard to master it to the best of my ability, that I became better then those around me. And second that when it came to sports, I was never the fast, super sprinter, but rather the long distance stamina performer. Well when I turned 16 my uncle bought me my first ten-speed. It was a used Schwin Varsity with the Ideale hard leather saddle. It was too small for me, but what the hell. I took it for a spin and brought it home and adjusted it to make it as comfortable for me as I could. I rode it all that winter, even in the rain. In the spring I picked up a friend rider who was a fellow schoolmate as well and we began to ride to Flaming Geyser Park near Auburn Washington. When we couldn’t get out early enough to do that, we went to the school track and road around it for hours at a rather slow pace, just chatting and getting time in. One day, my Cross Country Coach saw us and before you know it, we were training on bikes. Swim team and Cross Country Running team quickly fell by the roadside, as I loved to ride. During the summer we raced to Flaming Geyser Park every day. The coach put us in every little summer event he could find, and many times we did quite well. But by the summer before my 18th birthday I had to make a decision of what I was going to do. When my mother heard I wanted to train on bikes and go as far as I could with it, she flipped out. Riding bikes was for people at the park having a picnic. Not people who were supposed to find a job and make a family. My father never said a word. At 18 I ended up in the US Marine Corp during the up rise of Grenada. Life changed drastically for me, but allowing my decisions to be based on what other people thought began to become a way of life. I ended up out of the Marines earlier then expected because of a physical injury, and ended up at home again. I began getting involved in martial arts and broadsword fighting. My sister went to college back in CA. and I felt lost. My father, an American Indian (Mescalero Apache to be precise) was a Reverend, and I had always grown up in the church, while my mother (an old fashioned German woman) went back to college and was becoming a communications professor. Well, my father’s doctrine sent him to another church in South Dakota. I was left alone again. And once again lost on what to do. So I did what was expected of me once again. I went to college in Kansas. Though I had only mediocre scores in high school I was admitted into the college because it was a Christian school and my father was a Reverend. So I began to go back for my art and once again got back into that. During this time I got into 3 different forms of martial arts over 3 years of time. But also became enamored with the sword, unfortunately no one had a clue about sword fighting where I was, so I stayed with my art. I always looking to go as far as I could go to achieve the best I could over all around me. My Art Professor, loved my work, and entered my stuff into quite a few shows, that actually one me money. And after I left the school at the end of that year, yes I said left; I had made a small name for myself with my art once again. I got to send in some relief drawings to marvel comics for filler pages for Captain America, and send in character designs, I also got to do other stuff, but in the end, the computer art world was taking over and my art style was going out of style. Within months, I watched the few moneymaking jobs quickly fade, I was told my art style wasn’t the “in” style anymore, so once again, you guessed it; I quit. I spent a lot of years after that, wandering I had collected quite a few swords, from my rapier and main gauche to my basket hilt, I became a favorite among the renaissance fairs I would go to but never stayed around long enough to do anything with it. I made friends who loved my talents and they sucked off me, and I let them, making girlfriends who thought I was exciting then finding out I had no self esteem a year or two later and leaving me. I followed my family around, and every endeavor I put my hand to started out great, and ending up in misery. I married once for the wrong reasons, thinking she would be my friend and support my need for self esteem (I am married now as well), boy that was a mistake. I got another girl pregnant shortly after the divorce, who told me she loved me, and we were engaged to be married, and as soon as she found out she wasn’t going to lose the baby, she looked at me and said I could go now, because the child support would cover her and she didn’t need me any more, boy that was a bigger mistake. I had become a true wanderer. Then a job opened up for me in Michigan and off I went. Wandering away. Well that job didn’t last to long nor did the few girlfriends I made and the path seemed back to usual. Well I met this girl and after three years we married. No; life wasn’t peaches and cream. We both had baggage. But she knew a few people, and I got an opportunity at a job with DPS (Detroit Public Safety) and though it seems like an oxy moron, I had a high code of ethics, which I stood up for and upheld to the best of my ability. I went through the Detroit Police Academy, and graduated at the top of my class, I stated from memory in front of the whole auditorium the code of ethics by memory without flaw. (In case you are wondering, a DPS Officer is an officer within the schools, he is only listed as a security officer level 2 on paper and is not allowed to carry a fire arm inside the schools because of the laws of the state, but he has the arresting powers of an officer, a very dangerous job, of which I am very good at.) I put away my sword collection and even went so far as to stop going to the renaissance fairs.
Through those last 5 years I also became enamored with computer gaming. A thing my wife detested. And continuously tried to get me to stop doing. I became the Commanding Officer of a very distinguished squad in Delta Force called Warriors of Honor and just like the rest of my life sat on my fat Arss gaining weight.
Last October I had to have an operation on my nasal airways and sinuses, and during the process of waking me, I awoke and then my heart slowed down and began to stop. They had to bring me back quick. I still remember hearing my wife screaming, as when this happened they had just wheeled me out to the main holding room and she was there. Something I forgot to mention, and need to add, is that I had become a smoker while in the Marine Corp. at 18 years old.
This brought some things in me to the top, and as I healed I began to realize that my self-esteem could only come from within me. Well 4 weeks ago I called my father in CA. (My whole family still lives there and I haven’t gone back in 7 years (amazing)). And at some time in that conversation the Olympics came up. In that conversation it came to me that I had quit at everything I had ever done. Oh I had helped a lot of people and done a lot for others, but never done what I really wanted to do. My father let me know that he had wished that I had tried to go for the Olympics and that he had always felt bad that I had never tried, we both wept that day, at such a waste of time that was called my life. Someone who had so much talent at so many things and never used them to further his life, letting them simply fall by the wayside.
Over the years I had learned how to give up on myself and never try to go as far as I could. So 1 week before the Olympics after a lot of soul searching I made up my mind. Before you berate me please listen. In the last four weeks I stopped smoking a pack a day, and have gone from 265 lbs to 250 lbs. I am 6’4” I am “NOT” interested in getting to the Olympics in a year or three. I still have a good 12 years in me, lol. I am not saying, “I am going to the Olympics” This is what I am saying. My whole life, I could have been great at something that I wanted to be great at. I now have my own self esteem and have made a choice to shoot for the Olympics in the future. That is not my long-term goal; that is my “direction”. My long-term goal is actually to head that direction and go as far in that direction as I can, until I can’t get any farther, so I can finally say to myself, “I went as far as I could, I didn’t quit before I found out how far I could go”.
I am here because you are all very good at what you do, and I am starting all over. I am doing this as well as road cycling, from the beginning, because the type of workouts do seem to compliment each other as they both require endurance, and thought over brute strength. I am moving forward even if you all tell me that at 52 at the 2016 Olympics, I would and could only be dreaming, I will still be able to hold my head up and say I tried, and I made it this far. And though I have my self-esteem, I have found, I still look for moral support sometimes, even in this short spurt of time. My knowledge of how to get started is almost non-existent from a schedule to a diet that will help me. I am held back, because my family’s lack of finances seems to have fallowed me as well. I have my fears, because I am working 40 hours a week, and going to school on a full schedule to become a teacher. I, believe it or not, was lent a good old fashion 37 lbs used Schwin Varsity with the Ideale hard leather saddle, is that crazy or what. Looks exactly like my first one. I will be riding every day to build up muscle, lose fat and gain endurance for fencing, as I have enrolled in my college’s fencing class, as well as joined a fencing program, called Renaissance Fencing in MI. I start both courses in the middle of September, but don’t know how much the equipment will be or if I can afford it. I will be putting in here my growth and direction, “honestly”, as often as I can and asking for advise, any you can think of or give.
OK now that you have finished laughing, and wiped the tears from your eyes, ok come on, stop laughing, ok, ok, there now, I am 6’4” tall, I have fairly lean arms though they are almost all muscle, and I have very strong legs, though I have realized they are only strong to hold up the stomach that is where 90% of my fat is stored. I went from 265 to 250 in the last month. I have been riding every day since I started this and will continue to and thru my classes. One of my other problems outside the lack of endurance and lack of money, and age, and lack of companionship for the company, I am also on a rotating schedule all the time as an officer, usually my schedule goes from days to midnights every three months. Jeez, guess I have rambled on way too much, well let the hollering commence. Thank you all for your time. Man I need an editor.