World Championships 2002 tapes are ready for pre-orders

[edew]

Ok, gang. I have compiled three tapes of the 2002 World Championships. Tape 1 consists of all the individual events, which includes all six gold medal bouts, complete with zero editing in between (you'll see all the dead time with the possible deletion of some seconds when the lights went out during the sabre match), so all the slo-mo replays are added in, PLUS 2.5 semi-finals: both women's sabre semi-finals complete, and half of the men's epee semi-finals.

Tape 2 consists of four team events, a complete women's sabre team match between Russia and Hungary. Good match; a complete men's foil team match between Germany and France; part of the men's epee team match between France and Russia; and part of the women's foil team match between Russia and Poland. This last match is the weakest of all four, as it only shows two bouts, one with Youcheva against Gruchala, and then the anchor bout between Bojko against Gruchala again.

Tapes 1 and 2 are both three-hour long tapes, so be prepared for lots of fencing coverage. Tape 3 consists of just the women's epee team between Hungary and Estonia; and the men's sabre team between Russia and Italy.

Almost all events include the medals ceremony, which is a nice added touch. You get to hear and see the expressions of the fencers as their national anthems are played.

Unfortunately, this year's championships is marked by too many blow-outs. Most of the events, individuals and team, were won by huge margins (well, except for the women's foil individuals, which was won by attrition). That did take quite a bit of the excitement out of most events. The two that were close came from women's sabre. Tan Xue squeaked out a victory against the stronger Elena Jamaeva to earn an asian gold in the individual women's sabre, and Russia came back from a 30-14 deficit to win 45-43 in the women's sabre team match.

The cost for the 3-hour tapes are $27 and the two-hour tape is still $20. In the ordering form,
www.eskimo.com/~edew/home/tape_order.html, I have included last year's and the 2000 Olympics tapes as available products. I don't have any remaining inventory of these tapes (well, maybe one or two tapes), but I can make additional duplicates. I'm charging $22.00 per tape because I don't anticipate too many requests for these, and making duplicates of a small order costs more.

Please visit the abovementioned webpage and make a copy of the page for ordering. Please do not PM/IM/email me for ordering. It's tough enough keeping track of what people want via one source of communication. I don't want to do three or more communication routes. Whew!

[Inquartata]

Any chance you'll be compiling weapon-specific tapes in the future? My interest in epee is vestigial, and in foil...less. But I'd love to have a tape of the sabre, or the highlights thereof.

[edew]

The main problem with making weapon specific is the time factor. If I can get 2 hours of sabre, I'd do it. But in some cases, I'll get 2.3 hours, or 1.5 hours. In that case, it's tough for me to justify charging people the amount (or tough for me to eat the extra cost).

In this particular case, I guess I can do that with each weapon (but not separated by sex). Sabre has the most coverage, mainly due to the women's individuals including both semi-finals. I think the two semi-finals, the finals, the men's finals, and both team matches will add up to 3 hours. Epee probably has the second most, with 1.5 men's and 1.0 women's individuals plus a complete women's and a partial men's team. It might not last all 3 hours, but will probably exceed 2 hours. The foil is probably the quickest, with a very quick men's foil individual final, a fairly quick women's individual final, a rout in the men's team (so it's quick) and a very brief women's team. I think I can fit that into a 2-hour tape.

Let's see what I can do. Always ready to serve the needs of others (although I stronly encourage people to open their vistas to other weapons: you learn a lot from watching other weapons and possibly apply some to your main weapon's game...'course, you have to know enough about fencing to do that).

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by edew

In this particular case, I guess I can do that with each weapon (but not separated by sex

Not a problem, I enjoy watching women's sabre as much as men's. ( Sometimes more, depending on the women, heh heh! )

[edew]

Two comments:

1). Thanks to all who have chipped in to the Peter Gustafsson Son Fund. The amounts have been much more significant than last year's.

2). The request at the moment is for a pre-order. That is, I need some number of you ordering so that I can use that amount to pay for the duplication.

I will make the duplication later this week and will send them out next week.

[Inquartata]

If you're willing to attempt the sabre-specific duplication?

[edew]

I will try to make sabre specific, foil specific, and epee specific tapes this week. In the meantime, I will make duplicates of the ones I mentioned above.