Montreal CSC #1

So, back from Montreal yesterday. The actual day of competition was Monday, but we had two days of mandatory training after that. It's always good to get in some work-outs the day after the tournament, because it reduces the stress the muscles go through and lets you focus on some of the mistakes that are still fresh in your mind....Damn it, what was I thinking when I did that???!!!!
I'll explain, in brief, the format of the event. The field is limited to the top forty-eight fencers in Canada. In the first round everyone is put into a pool of 6 or 7 which is a round robin with bouts up to 5 points. The field is then ranked in order, and put into a tableau based on your results from the pool. The top four fencers go directly in the round of 16, while the rest go into a direct elimination (DE) format with bouts upto 15 points...which means the 5th place fencer fences the 48th place, etc., etc. I ended up in the top four after the first round, so I had a bit of a break...actually almost 2 hours!! From this DE round they go down to 12 fencers, which are then added to the previous four, creating the final 16. Get it so far? Now, the 16 left are put into 2 super pools of 8 fencers each, with a round robin format up to 5 points. The 8 fencers with the most wins go into the final DE tableau while the others ranked 9-16 are sent packing. In this final round of 8 I faced my good friend Michel from Montreal. An experienced fencer to say the least, he was in Athens last Olympics. I was ousted by him 15-9.....but if there's one thing about fencing, is that if you have a name you get the points. Clearly, I had 4 points taked away from me purely from him having a name that the judge knows. Hard to explain, but think of it as getting free drinks at the bar because you know the bartender...and there's nothing anyone can do about it!! These National tournaments are not as serious as they seem. I mean, at this point in the game the selection commitee is looking at International results over what happens Nationally. For example, you can be ranked 12th in the country, but if you can perform better than the 3rd place fencer in an International event you will be selected for sure. Anyways, I ended up with a 5th place, retaining my overall ranking. I haven't added any photos this trip, since I think we all know what the streets of Montreal look like!!! See you after the Commonwealths!!!