African Epee Champs

[Cyranox11]

Hi

Johannesburg played host to the African Epee Championships this weekend.

It was quite nice, although not an entirely unmitigated success. In general, things went off quite well and we can be happy with the reuslts. South Africa picked up gold in the Ladies' individual comp (my coach's wife, Natasha Tyshler) as well as a bronze, and a silver and bronze in the men's individual. Our men's team placed second and the ladies third.

Renee Roche was there and it was quite nice that he sat through both days of fencing and watched just about every bout from pools to the final team match.

I was very impressed with the Egyptian men who were very well prepared and extremely competitive. They could do truly amazing things with an epee and thoroughly deserved their golds in individuals and teams!
The Tunisian Ladies were also impressive and kicked butt regularly.

Congrats to the South Africans for a gold, 2 silvers and 3 bronze medals!!!

I must say though, that I was not impressed with the Ladies epee. It was in the main very defensive, slow and uninteresting to watch. One semifinal ended 2-1 after extra time and all 3 periods of the bout being fully utilised. The final team match was not much better and after 4 bouts I dont think more than 9 points had been scored by both teams combined!
The referees really should have invoked the passivity rule (although fencers were bouncing and occasionally beating blades...).

IMHO (based on this fencing) it would have been far better to dump Ladies' team epee from the Olympics and keep Ladoies team foil!

Later
Cyr