Junior and Cadet World Championships 2008

[Capt. Slo-mo]

[I]High drama in Eurosportland today in junior team action. First, WS:

Round of 16, Germany and Italy are tied, 44-all. On the adjacent strip, France and Ukraine are also knotted at 44-each. Both sets of fencers fired off the line in synchronization, there are frantic multiple actions, and two sets of double lights. France wins! Germany wins! But wait, it can’t be that easy…

Italian CT Magro fires out of the team box like he’s been shot from a circus cannon. Within seconds, he’s literally inches from the director’s proboscis, waving his arms like a frenetic beekeeper who has just realized he;s in the middle of an Africanized Bee swarm without his mesh hood..

If anyone ever hears Magro complain about being characterized as “getting in the ref’s face,” simple intone: “Acireale. 2008.”

They go to the replay. US ref Ariana Klinkov is the replay official, and she upholds the call. Both Italian coaches are ballistic. Magro makes a few more histrionic gestures of polite disagreement, and storms from the floor. The Italian fencers dolefully sit at the laptop long after the official have left the strip, watching the final point over and over.

On the French side, joy turns to agony as the Ukrainians call for a replay. Sure enough, the call is overturned. French anchor Berden falls to the floor, and for a moment, appears to be having an epilectic seizure. Once she recovers, she strips and hurls her mask and glove. Berden refuses to unhook, and for the next 55 minutes, stands on the piste, refusing to yield. The French look for anyone in a blue blazer to drag to the replay laptop. The French team camps out in in the box. An official appeal is filed, the substance of which is unclear. More blazers converge. After nearly an hour, a paper is delivered from the DT, the two teams retake the piste, and the overturn is upheld. They salute and shake hands…something Berder appeared to fail to do after the replay.

You've heard the news...now stand by for: "The Resst of the Story" (character added so thousands of Metamucil-swilling Harveyites don't start filing tm paperwork on Craig. Yes, quite selfless of me, indeed)

After talking with Ariana today at the Portland NAC, some facts not in evidence during my last-second witnessing of the WS hijinks:

There actually was no video replay underway during the round of 16 matches, although it could have fooled a casual observer, and in fact completely fooled me...as I walked in on the last point.

Here's why.

In Italy's case: the replay camera (to be used later in the day) was not pointing directly at the strip, nor was it manned...yet it was on, and displaying for the replay computer. Ariana was in fact sitting at the replay table right in front of the computer, all the personages mentioned converged on the computer area, and the original call was upheld. So far, so good. However; the scoping of the computer merely proved the action was not captured, and Ariana had to make no judgement call. The Italian squad did indeed slump sadly in front the laptop for quite some time, apparently hoping that THIS time, the camera would show the touch.

In the France/Ukraine bout, it got even murkier. The replay camera just happened to be parked showing the center of the strip, and the referee, perhaps by habit, automatically looked at the stripside monitor...even though the camera had not been used all bout. Ariana relates that it was this action that caused the French complaint...that the ref used the monitor at all. My recollection, though, is that he looked at the stripside monitor, then walked to the review laptop, watched and consulted with the replay official, and then took the bout away from the French and gave it to the Ukrainians...so I'm not sure when the actual call was formulated.

As far as the pandemonium, the French occupation of the strip and the calisthentics-level full-body arm-waving by Magro, though...every word absolutely true, perhaps even tastefully understated.

[sionnach]

Can't wait to observe such antics in Belfast next year (: