US Fencing Olympic team

It's official! The United States has an Olympic fencing team. The US Olympic team members are made up of fencers who will fence individually and fencers who will fence as three-person teams. Although most of the spots on the team were taken at the end of March, there were a few spots left to be filled. It's all official now, though.

The United States Fencing Association(USFA)named the US fencing team late Saturday afternoon.

Several members are returning Olympic athletes; others are new to the games.

2004 Gold Medalist Mariel Zagunis and Olympic Veteran Keeth Smart will lead the US Women's and Men's Sabre teams at the 2008 Olympic Games. The United States qualified three teams for Olympic competition - Women's Sabre, Men's Sabre, and Women's Foil. Bronze medalist Sada Jacobson and Rebecca Ward will join Zagunis on the women's saber team. Dagmara Wozniak is the alternate and can be called in as a substitute during the team event.

I'm sure we're going to have a great Olympic competition; our women's sabre team is one of the best in the world, and some of our individual fencers are quite good as well.

I can't wait to hear about the results of the games! Unfortunately, most fencing does not get broadcast on television. Well, not on any channels that I get, anyway, so I'll consider myself lucky if I only get to see the gold medal bout. Particularly if our women's sabre team goes as far as I think they will.

Olympics and politics are like oil and water

I guess you could call this a continuation from last week's post. I'll say it again so you don't have to scroll down: Political protests at the Olympics only hurts the athletes. It's not an effective way of bringing about changes in policy.

In case you're wondering what all this mess boils down to, it's a complex combination of social, political and environmental issues.

In January, environmental issues and factors were the primary causes for concern for the competing foreign countries' Olympic committees. It has now shifted toward a political and social debate between the People's Republic of China, commonly known as China, and Tibet, an autonomous region in Central Asia, once a Chinese province until a proclamation of independence in 1911.

History has shown that protesting and boycotting the Olympics is futile. Like any good show, the games must go on! The Federation Internationale d'Escrime (International Fencing Federation) certainly plans to attend.

Rene Roch, the president of the FIE, talked to Xinhua about the games and a little about how politics enters the mix.

[T]he Olympic[s] should not be mingled with politics, and people are invited to come to the Beijing Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), not only the host country government.

Fencing is going to be represented as strongly as ever at the Olympics; Roch is even planning to appeal to the IOC to add two more fencing events to the Games so that every aspect of fencing is represented.

I'm glad somebody is being sensible about all this. If protesting the Olympics didn't work in 1936 or in 1980, it's not going to work in 2008. Please. If you want to be patriotic, do it by showing support for your country's athletes. Save the politics for the peace talks.

What happened to peaceful protest?

Why is it that supporters of Free Tibet can't protest nonviolently? What ever happened to peace marches and hunger strikes? I can understand why Tibet wants to be independent, but I can't say that I agree with some of their methods for getting attention.

At the Olympic torch relay in Paris last week, Free Tibet protestors tried to take the torch from Jin Jing, a Chinese Paralympic fencer who lost a leg to cancer when she was nine years old. What were those people thinking?! This did not help their cause! In fact, it was the opposite of helpful!

[W]hen she was filmed protecting the torch from pro-Tibet protesters amid chaotic scenes in Paris, the one-legged athlete was hailed by Chinese internet users as an "angel in a wheelchair".

Chinese Communist propagandists could not have written a better scene to gather popular support. This one incident has probably wiped out a good deal of Tibetan and Western sentiment in China. And the Chinese media have been eating it up:

The one-legged fencer put her body on the line for her country. Jin tightly grasped the torch as hysterical protesters tried to snatch it during the Paris leg of the relay on April 7. The wild protesters beat her and one angry man pulled her hair.

Hello, protestors? Are you listening? Attacking and nearly injuring this woman did not help your cause. It just made you look like a bunch of criminals--you might as well have tried to steal her purse. Also, what kind of idiot attacks a human being as part of a human rights demonstration?

I really only have two points to make here. First, nonviolent protest is going to be more effective than attacking women and disabled people. Look how well Gandhi's movement worked. Those protestors ought to take a page out of his book. Second, Olympic protests have a long history of ineffectiveness. Protesting like this only hurts the athletes.

I'm not supportive of what China is doing in Tibet and Sudan, but I think there are better ways for people to demonstrate their feelings about the issue. I'm not going to stand behind any group that is willing to injure innocent bystanders to prove a point.

Club news!

Everybody needs to come to practice on Friday. I realize that most of you are new to fencing, and it's past time that somebody showed you how to take care of your equipment. I know it seems a little intimidating sometimes, but equipment that is properly maintained will last longer and perform more reliably than equipment that is only repaired when it breaks. Also, you get in trouble at tournaments when your weapon is missing a screw or your body cord is broken, etc. One equipment malfunction is worth a yellow card--a warning. After that, each failure is worth a red card--your opponent gets a point. I got four points in a five-touch bout once because somebody hadn't been taking care of his gear. You don't want to be that guy. Trust me. It's the most embarrassing thing ever.

Gear problems can also turn into safety problems. I'll discuss these things more on Friday, so be sure you come! We're not going to set up the strip or drill until after you've had the gear lesson--that's how important it is!

Second--the Club Sports End of the Semester Banquet is coming up soon! There isn't an official date yet, but it's going to be either April 30 or May 7. We need to provide pictures, so bring your cameras to practice and snap some shots (then send them to Ed), and we also need to nominate some people for awards. Since we have such a small club, we want to make sure everyone gets an award at the banquet. So. Here's how it's going to work. Come up with an award (it can be silly or serious), nominate a person (or more than one person) for the award, and send your award and nomination to Lauren over the Facebook group. Lauren will put them together, print them out, and we will vote on the awards at practice one day soon. Please don't just nominate yourself. It's okay to do that, but be sure you make a nomination for someone else, too.

Paralympic Fencing

I bet you didn't know that wheelchair fencing was a Paralympic sport! It was introduced at the 1960 Paralympic Games in Rome, and more than 20 countries particiapte.

In the able-bodied sport of Fencing, two fencers compete on a 14-metre strip. In Wheelchair Fencing, the competition is static. The wheelchairs are fixed in place to the ground by metal frames and the chair is preferably clamped to both sides of the frame to keep the chair from tipping. The fencer with the shortest arms decides if the playing area will be at his distance or that of his opponent. One hand holds the fencing weapon and the other is used to hold onto the chair when lunging and recovering.

Pretty cool, huh? Check out this video I found on YouTube:


Foil and epee wheelchair fencing are open to both men and women, but saber is limited to men. That seems a little unfair to me, considering how well our women's able-bodied saber fencing team is doing in international competitions right now.