Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Olympics Yeh!

Been a long time since my last post. Reason being that I have quite a boring life and and been doing basically nothing. Since the Salle finished up for the summer I have fenced a grand total of ... (drum roll please)...Once! Terrible really.

One thing I have been doing of course is watching the Olympic Fencing. Before you ask: No it was not on the telly in Ireland. I watched it on the webcast of an Italian sports channel, complete with commentary in Italian. I can tell you now that "toca" is hit, "assaulto" is fight, and I think that "stocada" might be attack. I managed to catch finals and bronze medal matches of:
  • Ladies Individual Foil: Two Italians were fighting in the final so that was pretty dull. Gold medal went to Valentina Verssali; I think that's her third individual medal, Silver to Giovan Trillini and bronze to the delectable Sylwia Gruchala.
  • Men's Team Sabre: Bronze medal match was brilliant USA vs Russia it went 44-44 before Pozniakov won it for the Russians. Final was between Italians and French and was punctuated by a bit too much complaining for my liking. French won in the end.
  • Ladies Team Epee: Good matches. Gold to France, Silver to Germany and Bronze to Russia.
Overall the Italians won based on medals tally. Although the US must win the prize for "most improved" with 2 medals (including a gold) in ladies sabre, and an excellent 4th place in the team sabre.