Seventh in Chemnitz
April 19, 2026 · 3 min read
We drove to Chemnitz at half past six this morning, four of us from the club in one car with the kit bags piled on the back seat, and by nine I was in the queue for the weapons check, holding my two épées point upwards and hoping. Both passed. There were twenty-three fencers in the over-forties, women and men together, from all over Saxony and Thuringia and one from Bavaria who had driven three hours and was not going to let anybody forget it.
My pool, bout by bout:
- a man from Leipzig: won 5 to 4;
- the strongest fencer in the pool, from Zwickau: lost 2 to 5;
- a woman from Jena: won 5 to 3;
- the man from Bavaria: lost 3 to 5;
- a retired teacher from Plauen who saluted every touch, even the ones against him: won 5 to 4.
Three wins, twenty touches scored, twenty-one received, an indicator of minus one, and ninth place after the pools. The best sixteen went through to the direct elimination, fenced to fifteen touches in three periods of three minutes with a minute’s rest in between, and that is a different sport. My first opponent was a tall man from another Dresden club with a long reach and a habit of attacking my front foot. I lost the first period 3 to 6. In the minute’s rest I sat on the floor and thought about distance, and for the second and third periods I stayed further away than felt comfortable and waited for his arm. I won 15 to 12, with seven of my touches to his wrist and hand.
In the quarter-final I met the fencer who went on to win the whole tournament, a woman from Erfurt who has fenced at veterans’ championships for years, and she beat me 15 to 6 in a little over five minutes. By the end I was too tired to keep my distance, and she knew it before I did. I finished seventh of twenty-three. On the drive home the others slept, and I went through the day touch by touch until we were back in Dresden.