Are entries declining for senior mens epee ranking events in Great Britain?

The simple answer here is of course, yes – it’s obvious. Speak with anyone who was fencing at senior open events 20 years ago and they’ll talk of massive competitions with 150-200 enties in mens epee being common place. A brief look at events that have taken place so far this year and you’ll struggle find any that have exceeded 100 entries. There is one. Just the one. In 2005 the Essex Open, Bristol Open, Leicester Open, Miller-Hallet, Hereford & Worcester Open, Birmingham International, Slough Open and the British Championships all had fields of over 100 as can be seen from the rankings data published for December that year. So what’s happened – where have all the entries gone?

The first place I chose to look for answers is within the British Fencing ranking lists to see if the number of fencers competing has indeed decreased. As the methods used to rank fencers has changed a few times over the years, it’s not totally reliable, but it does give a reasonable indicator to the competitive fencing population for each year.

Ranking List Population (Mens Epee)

This I thought was quite surprising. Although the trend is heading down, the difference isn’t that great and 2022 had a noticible increase in competitive participation that is comparable to what was happening 10-15 years ago. With roughly 15 events still to come this year, I could envisage the 2023 total also going exceeding 500. Taking this at face value, we can say that the fencing population is still there, so the decline in entries must due to other reasons

Lets take a look at the number of ranking competitions being held each year.

Number Of Ranking Events (Mens Epee)

This is where it gets interesting – in 2014 the number of ranking events peaked at 50 for the year and it’s this rise in the number of competitions that seems to coincide with the average number of entries decreasing. That seems quite logical to me. The fencing population has been relatively static over the years, but it is now starting to be spread more thinly as the number of competitions increases. With this increase in choice for fencers, it could be suggested that this led to the demise of the larger more established events – the Essex Open, Bristol Open, Bill Hoskyns Open, Hereford & Worcester Open and the Slough Open all shutting their doors permenantly between 2015 and 2017 as they became economically unviable. Entry numbers for other events also took a hit, for example, entries to the Welsh Open in 2015 were down by two-thirds from 189 in 2006 to just 64 in 2015.

With seemingly too many competitions in the calendar and entries falling, the inevitable happened. It wasn’t just the big established events closing down, smaller ones were too. By 2019 the number of competitons had fallen to just 32.

It’s hard to comment on where we are now as I think the effects of the 2 year hiatus for Covid are still being felt. 2022 had just 28 ranking events and it looks like we will be back up to around 35 this year. With fewer competitions and roughly the same fencing population, logically we should start to see an increase in the average number of entries. As can be seen in the table below, there is a slight increase, but it’s definitely not significant. Other (economic) factors could be influencing that right now, but that’s another discussion altogether.