Craig’s Fencing Blog

Today I was supposed to go down to the Silk Market, or at least do something cultural since I was taking the morning off from the epee competition.  (The US did not qualify a team.)  I’ll still cover the medal rounds.

I had some time today, so I got up a little late (the next two days will be early) and headed over to the venue to drop my gear off. Met up with Amy and Serge Timacheff (from fencingphotos.com) and we decided not to do the silk market - just too nuts. Since Amy didn’t want to go, I was okay with trying to get over to USA House to pick up a couple of more things for people on my shopping list.

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It’s a great way to keep in touch with the family while I’m in China.

I go down and use the WiFi in the media center (which, since they can, they’ve charged us a large amount of $$ to access) and then fire up Skype.

If they’re online, then we can do a little bit of video phone. It’s sort of neat, but with this connection and the lag the picture isn’t that good. Once the kids start moving around the video just hangs, but I can hear everyone.

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Searching for Olympic goodies should not be this frustrating.

The fencing venue has a small store where you can buy some Olympic stuff. Their selection off fencing items: 0!
Shirts, yes, there is a “Beijing 2008″ standard logo shirt. But no fencing.

In the main “superstore” on the Olympic Green they have shirts for Athletics, Diving, and Tennis. Nothing else.

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The United States Women’s Fencing Team earned the bronze medal by defeating France 45-38. This is the second fencing medal in the 2008 Games for Mariel Zagunis (Portland, Ore.), Sada Jacobson (Dunwoody, Ga.) and Becca Ward (Portland Ore.) having swept the gold, silver and bronze medals in the individual contest, respectively.

More info shortly including bout recap on Fencing.Net.

Yesterday’s women’s sabre event featured an American sweep and also a plethora of US press in the media room and stands.  Today’s men’s epee event has more press overall on hand but mostly from foreign media outlets.  It’s a showing of how internationally spread out participation in epee is.

Another contrast is the technology being used.  Where women’s sabre is at the height of fencing technology with wireless (reelless) scoring and lexan masks, epee is old school; still tethered to reels and using the standard mesh masks.

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