Rene Roch: MST or MFT out of 2008 Olympics

[fencingpictures]

Plenty of updates on fencingchannel.tv.

The biggest news is from Rene Roch. In an address from the FIE President, Roch lays out the reasoning why it's Men's Sabre Team or Men's Foil that has to be removed from the 2008 Olympics. The event which isn't fenced in the Olympics will be fenced at the 2008 WCs, in the same venue as the Olympics but 4 months earlier. It's down to Team Sabre or Team Foil for men. Women will be fencing Foil Team and Sabre Team, as Women's Epee was in the last Olympics.

The decision will come to a vote in the next few days, at an FIE meeting in South Korea at the Jr World Championships. We'll be there and we'll announce the decision asap.

New videos / interviews, all free:
- 2006 CIP Semi-Final between Bissdorf and Kleibrink
- St Maur, with Sherraine Mackay winning a Gold
- Paolo Milanoli, Bas Verwijlen, Sada Jacobson interviews
- And more stuff

Help!
Here's where we need your help -- what do you think of this promotional video? Does it make fencing look exciting and interesting? It's for next year's Challenge International de Paris -- do you have any feedback?

http://www.fencingchannel.tv/podcast/FFE_0329.mov
(Streaming Quicktime video.)

[rcmatthews]

I think the video looks pretty good. Some of the footage at the beginning has a slight blur to it, but otherwise its as exciting as foil can be.

[eac]

The video is horribly incompatible with some computer systems. Could you please provide a downloadable video as well as streaming?

[Tomas N]

Tried to open it, but all I got was sound.

Tomas

[Gav]

Try upgrading to the latest version of quicktime (version 7?). You don't need Itunes as well.

[veeco]

It's a great video! Thanks for doing this, I believe as you probably do that fencing can only get popular through this kind of work.

[chiz]

Help!
Here's where we need your help -- what do you think of this promotional video? Does it make fencing look exciting and interesting? It's for next year's Challenge International de Paris -- do you have any feedback?

http://www.fencingchannel.tv/podcast/FFE_0329.mov
(Streaming Quicktime video.)

This is a very good promo for a foil event, poor promo for a fencing event...

chiz

[rcmatthews]

Well, I think the CIP is only foil.

[fencingpictures]

News Flash: Taback City, South Korea
- Men's Foil and women Epee eliminated from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games!
- Federation votes 45 for Sabre and 20 for foil to be kept at the Olympic Games.

World Championships, April 2008
- WCs will feature Women's Epee and Men's Foil
- Will be fenced in Bejing at the Olympic sports complex, 4 months before the games.

Stay tunned into the fencing channel. We will post and official announcement from FIE with the highlights of todays Congress.

www.fencingchannel.tv

[KD5MDK]

I presume these World Championships (I initially read WCs to mean World Cups, we need better differentiated abbreviations...) are not usual in Olympic years, but are specially created to give WET and MFT something to determine a championship that year? Presumably they'll still have an individual event, as will the Olympics. I wonder if there will be any interesting differences in the outcomes between the two individual events.

[fencingpictures]

http://www.fencingchannel.tv/feature/2006fie/index.htm

Two new interviews up, one in English with Farber, one in French with Roch and Farber, explaining the outcome of the vote. Farber mentions the IOC has expanded the field of athletes for individual fencing events to 212.

[dekko]

They should get rid of team women's epee. That had the least viewer appeal last time.

Glad Team Women's Sabre is getting in though.

[veeco]

You cannot be serious! I found women's epee was a great event! The individual event was awesome, Timea Nagy fenced brilliantly, and the team event was really good too!

Although I am sure that Women's Sabre and Women's Foil in Beijing will be great too.

[MikeHarm]

After the endless foilepee threads I have to wonder how Alan is taking this development..