Hi, I'm Jo, a sabreuse (female sabre fencer) and ranked number two in Britain.

Over the coming months you can follow me on 606 as I try to qualify for the Beijing Olympics later this year.

Last weekend saw me competing at the England Cup - the first competition in the 2008 FIE (Federation International d’Escrime) calendar and being the first competition in the Olympic year I knew it was going to be a tough one.

Click here to check out the photos.

Last year the competition consisted of 74 Entries from 14 different countries.

This year the entry was almost doubled to 123 fencers from 24 different countries (notably only the Russians and the Romanians were missing).

To give you an idea of the strength, out of the top 30 fencers in the world, only 5 did not enter.

Great Britain was allowed to enter 25 fencers by default as we were the host nation.

On Saturday, 2 February the preliminary rounds were held. The top 16 ranked fencers are exempt from the preliminary rounds meaning the rest of the entries are split by their world ranking into pools of six and seven (depending on the numbers).

Before the competition I was ranked 60th in the world and 46th going into the event due to the missing fencers.

Each fencer in each pool fences one another to five hits to determine their seeding to go into the direct elimination rounds.

In my pool of seven I won three and lost three fights.

I lost a fight at the end of my pool to a fencer from Kazakhstan which I shouldn’t as technically I was better, but I couldn’t get around her unpredictable style.

Winning four flights would have put me in a better position than winning only three, but three was okay.

After the pool section I was seeded 58 out of everyone who had fenced in the preliminary rounds.

On Sunday 64 fencers would be fighting off for first place so they had to get everyone on Saturday to fight for the remaining 48 positions (as the top 16 exempt from the prelims would already be the top seeds on Sunday)

I had to fight against an Italian fencer, Mariangela Postiglione, who had done better in the preliminary rounds than I had and so was seeded higher.

I had fenced her before and have beaten her as many times as I have lost to her so it was always going to be a tough fight.

It was almost hit for hit until the break where I was 8/7 ahead.

After the break she changed her tactics making it a lot harder for me to defend her attacks than in the first half.

But I changed my game and managed to pull away to make the score 14/10, and finished with a fast direct attack off the start line, winning the fight 15/10.

On Sunday, the top 16 were added to the 48 seeded fencers from Saturday - I was 60th seed which meant I had to fence number six seed, Alexandra Socha from Poland, who is ranked 10th in the world.

At the start of the fight I was having problems with her distance and getting out of the way of her 6ft lunge, and when it came to the break I was 8/5 down.

What my coach, Ian Williams, had told me to try at the start of the fight didn’t seem to be working so he told me to change my tactics a bit and work a lot harder and faster in the middle to try and break up her attacks and score more hits through timing rather than distance.

So I did exactly that and the score after the break was 10/2 to me, winning the flight with a perfect parry riposte 15/10!

For me this is probably my lifetime best fight as I completely dominated the bout and controlled her style to suit mine.



As I scored so many hits in a row, she started to lose it in her head which helped me even more to control the fight.

Now I was into the last 32 and I drew my team-mate, and British number one, Louise Bond-Williams.

I was confident about the fight as I had fenced so well in the previous round and I still felt I had a lot of energy and strength in my legs.

I started off very well and was executing lots of fast attacks, similar to my fight with Socha and at the break I was 8/3 up.

After the break, Louise completely changed her tactics not allowing me to attack her as much and she concentrated more on attacking me.

She brought the score back and it was almost hit for hit until around 10/10. Louise went on to win the fight 15-13.

It is always very hard drawing a team-mate as we know each other so well.

I think it was a good fight on the day; it’s just unfortunate that I lost!

Maybe if I had drawn a different, foreign, opponent I may have had more of a chance?!

Overall I finished 32 out of 123 which I am pleased with.

What I am more pleased about is my last 64 fight which shows me that I am able to beat some of the top fencers in the world which is a good feeling going into the last half of the Olympic Qualifying period for fencing.

In April the European Zonal Olympic Qualifiers will be held in Istanbul.

Only one British fencer will be able to attend this competition if they do not qualify directly by being in the top eight or so of the world rankings, so there is quite a lot of pressure on the competitions coming up, which are:

Orleans Grand Prix World Cup, France > 8th-10th Feb
Budapest World Cup, Hungary > 23rd-24th Feb
Madrid World Cup, Spain > 1st–2nd March
Lamezia Terme Grand Prix World Cup, Italy > 14–16th March

I'll be back soon to let you know how things are progressing, in the meantime, please leave any questions and I'll answer them as soon as I can.

Jo