- 3 Jul 08, 02:39 PM
Look down the list of 28 Olympic disciplines and it's interesting to note how many of them count as combat sports.
There's boxing of course, judo and taekwondo, wrestling...and hockey. Or maybe that was just at my school.
And then there's fencing. On the surface, it doesn't have a great deal in common with the others. Think boxing and you think rough and ready East End gyms, the Kray twins, blood, sweat and broken noses. Think fencing and it's all about Errol Flynn and the Three Musketeers and duels at dawn over the honour of a fair maiden.
The address of the British Fencing Association in London is 1, Baron's Gate. Says it all, doesn't it?
But scratch the surface (with the point of your epee, maybe), and the similarities appear.
Alex O'Connell, one half of the GB fencing team for Beijing, is well over 6 feet tall, left handed, and notoriously difficult to beat, according to Graham Watts, performance director of British fencing.
"Think of him as a counter-punching south paw", he told me at the team announcement in London's Mayfair last week (there we go again with those posh stereotypes).
Alex is currently studying Classics at Cambridge University, having learnt to fence at his public school in Essex.
He explained the appeal of the sport to me as providing the perfect combination of physical and mental discipline. You need to be able to out-think your opponent and out-run them as well, using nifty footwork and landing hits when they're least expecting it.
So - floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, then?
But the big difference between fencing and other martial arts is that there are no weight categories. As the scoring blows don't carry great physical force behind them, you're less likely to do your opponent serious damage.
Londoner Richard Kruse could find himself up against a 6 foot 5 inch Chinese athlete or a 5 foot 6 inch Korean competitor in the foil competition in Beijing. Both of them are serious contenders for medals.
Kruse describes himself as the Crafty Cockney of the GB team. Unusually, he didn't go to public school, and believes that fencing is beginning to widen its appeal. In his spare moments he helps out coaching local kids at the Camden Fencing Club in North London.
It may be stretching it a bit to imagine York Hall in Bethnal Green opening up a Salle D'Armes alongside the boxing ring. I don't expect we'll see much pay-per-view fencing live from Caesar's Palace in the near future.
But if fencing still appears a niche sport with an elite image, consider this - it's featured in every Olympic Games since the modern era began in 1896. Only athletics, swimming and gymnastics share that distinction.
And if either Kruse or O'Connell can come back with a first British medal in the sport in 48 years, it could inspire a new generation of young musketeers to take to the piste and go "en-garde" for their country.
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Is Fencing banned for people who didn't go to Benenden, Charterhouse or Westminster? Is there a law saying only people who talk with an RP accent can pick up a sabre? Do fencing clubs post "No chavs or urban poor allowed" signs outside their doors? Surely the problem is more that every single sport is considered "posh" in the UK. The only thing people are allowed (without facing societal mocking) to do is watch the premiership on tv.
I just had a quick look at the 28 Olympic disciplines - 13 right off the bat, in deluded British terms - are elitist. *Archery, *Badminton, *Canoe/Kayak, *Equestrian, *Fencing, *Hockey, *Modern Pentathlon, *Rowing, *Sailing, *Shooting (non drive-by variety), *Table Tennis, *Tennis, *Volleyball.
And that's leaving aside the USA skew which worms in US sports to the Olympics - no-one in Great Britain or most of the world plays, has ever played or has ever even seen a Baseball, Basketball, Handball, Softball match and it's not like (high school) "Wrestling" has a great grip on anywhere outside the American mid-west.
It's a little harsh to lay imaginary blame at the door of the parents who send those 7% of children to fee-paying schools, with an interest in multitude of sports instead of watching only the one on TV. Without them - the schools and the people who attend - we'd barely win an Olympic medal again. I know it's right-on fashionable to believe that the best just has to be a bloke or girl who's one step away from jail, as yet undiscovered. Fact is most chavs are concave-chested weaklings, and most good sportsmen/women have good genetics and successful, in whatever field, parents.
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While I don't agree with everything that xxxCORRECTxxx has written, I do agree with the broad sentiment.
Sports which require special training facilities, equipment and expert tuition are on some level elitist, because you have to have access to those facilities. Most poor people don't.
Many years ago, I attended a grotty comprehensive and the only sports that available were football, football, basketball (the indoor sport) and cricket on asphalt (twice).
We had an annual track and field based sports day which was painful to watch (although the untrained javelinists were entertaining in a 'watch through the fingers' sort of way...)
I had to work my way out of that grotty comp and into a decent university before I had access to decent sporting facilities and training, and had the opportunity to find a sport I actually liked. I fenced for my universities (as an undergraduate and a postgraduate) and have medals for it.
I probably don't have what xxx would consider 'good' genetics or 'successful' parents. What I did have was a fair amount of determination and access to training.
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I'd like to agree with correct. And not just because I also have some x's in my screen name!
There is an aspect of British psyche where as a nation we focus in on one sport to the exclusion of all others. In our case it's football.
If I were to walk into the pub down the road while most of you were in there announce I was off for a little bit of fencing, a lot of you would snigger and murmer "well lah dee dah!".
Yes, yes. I know that sometimes another sport rears its head for a minute or two (think "Tennis") - but for the other 50 weeks a year we'll all be more concerned about what a bunch of paid mercenaries are getting up to at Arsenal and Chelsea while we all sit back drinking beer and imagine we're somehow involved in proceedings.
It might well be that access to training and facilities is the key to Britain getting more Olympic medals, but alone this isn't enough. Attitudes have to change and it has to become acceptable to enjoy more than one sport.
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