Antalya Men's Foil uploaded YOUTUBE

[Superscribe]

At one point Zhu counter attacked Joppich. It was basically a pronated flick-to-flank-counter-attack. It was beautiful, and I heard a twinge of emotion from Cotton as to how beautiful it was.

If Derek was more expressive and inflective with his voice, I think the commentary would have been better. Having the confidence to talk about what a fencer is doing wrong, what they need to change to make a touch was already much better than the commentary I heard from the Athen's olympics.

A few more "OH BABY"'s or a couple "and Joppich's mother felt that one!" might also have been more appealing to the average NBC viewer.

That's just me.

[epeeslasher]

Besides the side commentary going on about the commentary, there was one more thing I wanted to say about the fencing.

I read something a coach said in an article once about how if a fencer knows the opponent is always going to attack with a lunge, the opponent will have no opportunity to hit, the fencer will always be able to get out of distance.

I've been watching more Italian fencers in slow motion, (really awesome, with high quality FIE video in slow motion you can actually see the path the blade travels) and all the really success ones (not all, just most) look like they are fencing off of this idea. They disguise their attacking footwork by making it look like other preparatory footwork, their opponents don't and they give pre-signals to the defender about what they want to do, allowing for an easy escape by the fencer who understands this.

One of the few ways to deal with this is by changing the tempo, usually speeding up faster than the opponent expects to get into distance to hit. If an opponent stays close, say lunge distance, speeding up is very very hard to do. One of the only ways to deal with that kind of opponent is to disguise the footwork, (or remise/redouble like crazy and hope your the only one that hits) and if you don't know how to disguise your footwork before the bout, you are going to have a hell of a time figuring it out under pressure (though it can happen, I think this is how Kim made a giant comeback against Golubitsky in the '97 world championship, after watching that bout again)

[Superscribe]

It sounds like you are talkinga bout accelerating the last part of the lunge, or when you reveal your prepatory footwork to actually be an attack.

This seems like it would be easier to do if you're opponent were closer, provided you are actually using your prepatory footwork to prepare.