International Fencing speeds up
its modernisation process with important changes
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During its congress, held last weekend in Leipzig (Germany), the International Fencing Federation (FIE) decided to continue with the modernisation of its sport. While in the past mostly the presentation of the sport was subject to change, now the delegates voted for important technical changes in foil¹ and sabre² fencing. ”It will help to make the sport easier to understand for spectators and bring foil fencing back to its roots.” said René Roch, president of the FIE. The most important change is to limit to a maximum the fencing action which provokes two lamps appearing at the same time. This will make the refereeing much more objective.
Furthermore the congress decided to keep up with the quotas of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concerning women in official positions. Already by today the FIE has more women involved in their commissions and within its executive committee (between 11 and 17 percent) than most of other international federations, but the new task is to reach within the next period the quotas given by the IOC (20 percent).
The FIE decided as well to cut down the total number of competitions. There will be no more then 9 World Cup and 5 Grand Prix events in the future (from October 2004). The six best results out of those 14 competitions will count for the official FIE World Ranking, while not more then three can be taken from the same continent. Furthermore the number of athletes for Grand Prix events will be limited down to a maximum of eight fencers per country.
The world of fencing will meet in Leipzig again in two years time. The delegates decided Leipzig to be the host city for the Fencing World Championships 2005. The host for the 2006 World Championships will be the Winter-Olympic city Turin.
¹ New technical details for foil fencing:
Shorter time for "blocking-time": now 300 milliseconds (former: 550)
Longer impact-time: now 15 milliseconds
More impact-power: now 750 gram (500)
Utilisation of a new point of the weapon
² New technical details for sabre fencing:
Shorter time for double hits: now 120 milliseconds (350)
Linear Mode
