Craig’s Fencing Blog

Got to head out to the Great Wall and that was a pretty good trip. I went with my guide Roger and a Chinese run tour bus for the package tour of the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall.

According to Fodor’s, I shouldn’t have even bothered with the Ming Tombs and the portion of the Great Wall I was to go to was the “tackiest” of the bunch. Oh well, I’m going and this is my day to do it so let’s just see what it all is.

The first part of the trip was to haul all of us to the “jade factory” where they loaded us off the bus and into a very brief “history” of Chinese jade in the region and into the big store selling all sorts of overpriced jade trinkets. I looked a a couple of things, which were all production line pieces, and then headed up for our “lunch”. The food was pretty bad but we did meet a few Germans who were taking tour as well. We chatted for a bit about what events they were watching and then headed back to the bus.

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Headed over to the Olympic Hockey Stadium to watch the gold medal match between China and the Netherlands.

The last time I had really watched field hockey was in college and it just wasn’t the same level. We had a decent team at Carolina, but in the Olympics the athletes are so much better, plus the atmosphere is really great. The fans for both sides kept up pretty constant cheering. The Dutch were singing and chanting the entire match.

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Here’s a sport that is:
- Mostly boring
- Has the occasional point scored
- Features two competitors bouncing for minutes at a time
- A referee who will tell them to “fight” after they’ve been bouncing for a couple of minutes

Though this sounds like low level epee with passivity (or non-combativity) being called, it is in fact Olympic Tae Kwon Do.

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I’m still digesting this.

The US Women’s Foil team won the silver medal tonight.

This means that the US earned five (5!) medals in fencing.
Italy has 6.
France has 3.
There is one event to go, so the US will end the Olympics winning the 2nd most medals. If we win a medal and Italy doesn’t, then the US will have tied with Italy.

Take a few minutes and think about that. Really think about what that means.

The Olympics has sparked yet another publicity angle for fencing - cool tech stuff.

Gizmodo called up the Fencing.Net offices the other day and talked to Michael about the scoring equipment. The article: Daft Punk Swordfighting: The Tech Inside Olympic Fencers Amazing Future Warrior LED Helmets.

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