I got a delayed Christmas present from my regular Swedish supplier, Peter G. Seven four-hour tapes (not completely filled up, of course) of 2001 World Championships coverage. I watched most of them today (1/1/2002) and enjoyed the coverage. Those Europeans are so lucky. I mean, hours and hours of coverage with minimal commercials. If it were done with US networks, we'd have a commercial after every touch.
Anyway, I plan to convert them from PAL to NTSC, editing along the way. I will keep to the spirit of the events and the coverage and put the men's/women's events paired up as at the championships. The pairs are: ME/WF, MS/WE, MF/WS. I'll get rid of some commercials, but I'll leave some in, since some are pretty interesting. (There's a commercial for Viagra [or, at least, information on impotence] just about at every break. I wonder if they're hinting something about people who watch fencing.)
The fencing, for the most part, is just brilliant. The men's foil individuals was just amazing. Loic Attelly is definitely going to be a force to be reckoned with for the next few years. Brice Guyart is still a little green. Sanzo is Sanzo.
Funny, the Italian foilists, Sanzo and Vezzali are almost one-note players. Sanzo does his prep with the circle-six before parrying or attacking; Vezzali does her counter-attack with avoidance (any enemy of the US should strap her onto an attacking ICBM: she'll avoid all counter-measures). But, they do it really well.
Anyway, the men's foil individuals are really the best. The women's sabre that came with it...well, sad to say, but women's sabre is not quite there yet.
Before I continue, I should mention that the women's event got short shrift. Only the women's sabre had the full complement of two semi's and the final. All others (WF and WE) had either some or all of the semi's taken out of coverage.
Men's epee was pretty good with Milanoli doing his machismo thing. Hoffmann was quite good against Lueke of Germany, but he was completely manhandled by Milanoli.
Aside from the men's foil final, all the other finals were a wash. The winner had the other fencer by the balls (or the feminine equivalent) despite what the results show. Well, the Bokel-Flessel bout was close. The women's sabre was a one-sided affair with Touya beating the crap out of Bianco. Milanoli had Hoffmann by the gonads and squeezed at will, despite a 15-10 result. Pozdniakov ripped the doo-dad from Pillet, who fenced very, very well in the semis, beating Gourdain. And Vezzali, her counter-attack thingee (which I expect to be completely neutralized this season) took away whatever flickiness of Bau's attack. We're all familiar with Bau's snake-like attack arm, and Vezzali very competently danced around them, hitting Bau (and Scarlat in the semis) with the counter-attack for about 75% of her touches.
The team matches (only watched WE/MS) was pretty good. People who want to learn some latest sabre technique is strongly advised to get the men's team sabre coverage. Fodor of Hungary did a dance on Charikov (and Frossine) with some precision-tuned attacks into preparation.
The women's epee also had some interesting show, but the score was so lop-sided that it didn't really matter.
I haven't watched the rest of the tapes: the family wanted to watch something else on the VCR, so I took the rest to report this.
I will not be doing any converting or duplicating until after I return from Vegas. Then, after I make the NTSC version of the tapes, I'll be able to announce what tapes are available and the cost.
Speaking of cost, I would like to do Peter G a favor, with those of you who plan to purchase the tapes to help out as well. Peter had a child about a year+ ago. The son was born with some rather severe deformities (cleft palate among the deformities). The son recently had surgery (successful) and is doing fine. (Hey, this is no joke, I'm not going to ding you for money and keep it myself.) Now, while Sweden has socialized medicine and the surgery and such are all paid for by the gub'mint, Peter and his wife still has a lot of extra work to do with the baby. I would like to ask the tape purchasers to donate some additional amount (which I'll detail later) which will go in addition to what I usually give him for his great service to the US fencing community. Is that ok to ask?
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