Fencing provides dual benefits to Team 2012
15 Dec 2009 10:00
On 30th November British Fencing hosted Visa guests at the famous Lansdowne Club where the guests joined the GB Team for a revealing afternoon training session before watching the foil team in action in an international match against Russia.
The evening international match would feature the GB men’s foil team while the guests themselves tried their hand at the ‘simpler’ epee; simpler because there are no rules on ‘right of way’ and the entire body area is a valid target. GB Head Coach Ziemek Wojciechowski, originally from Poland, gave the 10 guests a competitive introduction to the sport before chairing a discussion with the elite foil team and it was here that the real insight into the life of a Team 2012 athlete emerged.
The four men in the foil team have taken on the challenge of delivering a medal at the 2012 Games. Leading from the front is 26-year old Richard Kruse. Having fought at both the Athens and Beijing Olympics (reaching quarter finals and last 16 respectively) he knows the journey ahead. 2009 has been quite a winning year with gold and silver medals in World Cup competitions and silver in the European Championships. Said Kruse “Last season was brilliant and I finished fifth in the overall world rankings which was fantastic. However, I know it’s going to be tough to keep that up this coming year. It’s definitely a case of ‘not panicking’ because I had a great year last year. I just want to make sure I am in the top eight or 16 of most competitions and get the odd medal. It’s not that I will not be trying as hard as I can but as long as I am still improving and the graph is still going up then I’ll be happy. Usually after you make a big jump there is a bit of a plateau and as long as there net progress building up to London then I’ll be happy. When I look back at Beijing I wasn’t the fencer that I’m becoming now. I was also riddled with injuries in the couple of years building up to the Games.”
Kruse then joined his foil team mates Laurence Halsted, Ed Jeffries and Jamie Kenber – together now ranked seventh in the world – in the contest against the Russians. Though the Landsdowne Club is the foil team’s permanent base, home advantage was not quite enough to beat third ranking Russia. Kruse showed his mettle in a win over Artem Sedov (ranked 12) but the Russian team collectively had a bit too much winning 45 – 37 at the close. Said Kruse “I think I was a bit tired for the team match in the end. But the Russians are the third best team in the world so it was really good for us to be fencing and training with them. We are sitting seventh in the world at the minute and overall we are looking really good and we are becoming a much more respected team which is great. We haven’t cracked Russia yet but I think when we do we’ll be continuously beating them. We are catching up because we are professional guys. I think three years should be enough to catch them and then overtake them”.