Category: Analysis

A Look Back At Epee Fencing in 2023

As 2023 comes to an end, I thought it would be interesting to looks at some of the key stats from the last 12 months. Although entries are still down on pre-covid times, there was a significant increase in competition participation when compared with 2022. Domestic competition activity for 2023 rose from 1619 fencers in 2022 to 2288 – this is very much in line with the numbers we were seeing in 2019. That being said, the number of competitions being entered has not recovered, finishing at 6812 which is significantly down from 7918 in 2017.

For more stats and competition results see – https://dankew.me/epee

Largest International Event 2023
713 – Challenge Wratislavia
589 – Coupe du Danube – Bratislava (EFC Cadet)
541 – Budapest Cadet Circuit (EFC Cadet)
470 – Osijek Fencing Cup (EFC U14)
464 – Colmar U23 European Circuit

Largest Domestic Event 2023
481 – Public Schools’ Fencing Championships
424 – British Youth Championships
264 – England Youth Championships
214 – Cocks Moors Woods Epee
190 – BUCS Individuals

Most Active Fencers Male 2023
30 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
29 – Vladimir Kukharev (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
21 – Casey Jones (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
21 – Lev Pyurbeev (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
20 – Ernesto Chiappini (The Chelsea Fencing Club)

Most Active Fencers Female 2023
27 – Eloise Russell (Malvern Hills Sword Club)
27 – Kira Grahamslaw (TMFC Fencing)
27 – Katy Hawthorne (TMFC Fencing)
26 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
25 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)

Most Active Domestic Clubs 2023
333 – Salle Paul North London Fencing Club
235 – OPS Epee Club
223 – Knightsbridge Fencing Club
213 – Malvern Hills Sword Club
207 – Brixton Fencing Club

Most Wins Male 2023
7 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
4 – Oghenegaren Esiovwa-Thompson (Haverstock Fencing Club)
4 – Winston Fung (Dream Fencing Club)
4 – Lucas Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
4 – Sameer Sunder-Rajan (Brixton Fencing Club)

Most Wins Female 2023
8 – Zoia Hinzhuk (Dacorum Fencing Club)
7 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)
6 – Reya Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
5 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
4 – Thea Tchalenko (Brixton Fencing Club)

Most Podiums Male 2023
13 – Dylan Helme (Wingerworth Fencing Club)
12 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
9 – Winston Fung (Dream Fencing Club)
9 – Tristan Lumineau (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
7 – James Dunmall (Royal Tunbridge Wells Fencing Club)

Most Podiums Female 2023
12 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
11 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)
11 – Reya Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
11 – Eleanor Scott (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
10 – Zoia Hinzhuk (Dacorum Fencing Club)


Fencing Club Profiles & Recent Results

I thought of this a few years ago but never got around to coding it – essentially if you’re running a fencing club social media account, website news page or maybe you announce the recent results at club nights, it’s very easy to miss who competed in what competition.

Fast forward to now, several years after thinking about creating a page to help with this, I believe there still isn’t any place you can visit that can easily present that information. Well, there is now. I’ve expanded the Club Profile page to include all results by fencers from the selected club.

Crawley Sword Club – https://dankew.me/epee/club.php?c=61

Youtube Finals Videos Added To Epee Results

I recall a few years ago I thought it would be nice to see competition videos next to the results listings but never actually got round to sorting it out. As it goes, there aren’t that many domestic finals videos on youtube, but there are enough to make it a worthwhile feature I think, so this morning I coded it up and created the first few results pages with embedded videos.

If you have any links to historic Open finals, please drop a comment below and I’ll add them in.

https://dankew.me/epee/result.php?r=6214

Challenge Wratislavia – Performance Breakdown By Country & Age Group

I can’t say for certain, but it can’t be far from the truth, Challenge Wratislavia is one of the biggest International youth fencing competitions in the world. It’s been in and out of favour as a selection event with England Fencing over the past few years, but rewind a few years and this is what U15 fencers in England were all focused on – getting their ENG stripes and being part of the squad travelling to Wroclaw. I was fortunate enough to attend this competions 4 times, not just with the England squad but also as an independent. It’s a truely fantastic event and a great entry point to competitive International fencing. If you just fancy a taste of International fencing or you’re looking for that stepping stone into the EFC U17 cadet series, this is event for you. Fingers crossed England Fencing reverse the terrible decision to remove this as a selection event and the next generations of fencers can once again experience this great competition as part of the England squad.

So, with that being said, I thought it would be interesting to see how fencers have performed for their countries over the years and how results at Challenge Wratislavia translate to performances in EFC cadet events and FIE junior world cups. You can see all of this for yourself right here;

https://dankew.me/epee/challengeWratislaviaHistory.php

Fencing Competition Results – Where Are We in 2023?

If you had some involvement in fencing (epee that is) before 2019, the chances are you used my web site epee.me. Four years have now passed since I closed the site down and I thought I’d have a look at where we are with competition results and ranking data. First up, let’s take a look at the British Fencing web site to see how the governing body present the data.

Results

It’s an extremely basic system with limited functionality. You can select gender, age, weapon and date range which then displays a chronological descending list of events and clicking on them shows the full results (except for International events where only GBR fencers results are displayed). Navigation options are somewhat limited (most disappear completely when you get to the results page) and the data is not linked in any way so it’s not possible to view anything more than just the competition result. There is no way of looking at a fencers competition history, previous winners of the event or anything related to ranking (that is a separate section).

Rankings

Once you get past the totally unnecessary page of category images and ultimately to the link where you can “view the full file”, what’s actually displayed here is actually well laid out and easy to follow. However, there is no historical data and it is essentially completely standalone – linking this to competition results should have been a minimum requirement I’d suggest.

The current rankings page offers up a link to “NEW: LATEST RANKINGS – Beta Version” which I checked, but I couldn’t really see any difference between this and the existing system aside from the removal of the category images. The primary change appears to be a more real-time insight into the rankings rather than having an update once a month.

So in summary, in my opinion British Fencing still have a long way to go to make the event results and rankings data both usable and useful. Small changes have been to the presentation of the data which is a good step forward, but it’s still a considerably long way from being a good system.

What else is out there?

England Fencing have started to use ophardt.online for rankings and a number of events that have taken place in the UK are now in their system. This is great to see as it ophardt offers a lot of nice extra data analysis features and automatically brings in data from many International events to a fencers profile.

There are also some other domestic event results finding their way onto ophardt, like the Welsh Open, Birmingham International, Invicta, etc but generally speaking, it’s missing most historical data for competitions held in this country. It must be said thought, that for U12 and U14 events held over the past couple of years, this is now a very good system.

A glimpse into the future with the British Fencing Ratings Pilot for foil …

It looks like a system that actually links fencers with the competition history and ranking (rating) points might be on the horizon. This is showing a lot of potential but it’s clear from browsing around there is still a lot of work to be done with the way the data is presented, as well as bringing in results from before 2022. It looks like we may have to wait until 2025 before this is fully rolled out and even then, it may not be for epee.

Conclusions

It’s actually a bit disappointing that there is still no web site or app out there for GBR epee fencers that allows them to easily check their current and/or historical results, rankings and performance at domestic and International competitions. With that in mind, and as I was recently looking for some old resullts for another project, I dug out an old backup of the epee.me data, restored that into a fresh db and downloaded the source code I put on github. After a few tweaks to the configs I had much of it up and running fairly quickly. A few evenings later of importing data, and it’s almost completely up to date – aside from the rankings, as that’s going to take more thought due to British Fencing constantly changing how they are applied, I’ve now got a fully functioning site.

Like I said above rankings are a little but problematical to resolve quickly, so instead I added some new features – most active epee fencers, most active clubs, largest events, etc. Everything else is pretty much the same as it was before;

I adjusted some of the more advanced analysis tools too, which I think I may expand on a little in the next few weeks as they offer a great insight into performance not only domestically but also Internationally.

That’s it for now. I’m not sure how I’ll continue with this, but for the time being you can access everything at https://dankew.me/epee/index.php

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

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. So what’s happened – where have all the entries gone?

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?

British Fencing Mens Epee Rankings - December 2005
British Fencing Mens Epee Rankings – December 2005

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)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
No. Fencers 443 627 620 546 541 562 683 636 618 622 561 516 597 496 460 451 442 587 473

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)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
No. Events 34 35 33 35 38 43 45 45 46 50 46 47 45 38 32 7 4 28 18

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.

Domestic Ranking Events (Mens Epee)

Year / Number of Entries
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Aberdeen Doric Open - 25 34 28 30 23 35 34 27 16 22 18 19 - - - - - -
Aldershot Open 95 115 102 79 75 - 68 69 81 68 81 64 43 54 77 71 - - -
Allstar Cup - - - - 64 74 34 13 - - - - - - - - - - -
Ashton Open 20 40 45 35 32 38 33 - 26 32 - - - - - - - - -
Bangor Open - - - - - - 10 - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bedford Open 80 93 - 90 115 68 66 68 39 59 58 75 53 58 - - - - -
Bexley Open - - - - 47 50 59 66 52 47 43 24 - 23 - - - - -
Bill Hoskyns Open 82 107 110 115 117 81 78 80 90 97 106 59 - - - - - - -
Birmingham International 133 164 152 131 155 139 110 131 116 115 79 83 91 98 102 - - 111 101
Brighton Open - - - - - - 41 48 60 67 56 47 - - - - - - -
Bristol Open 201 200 168 158 178 136 126 154 151 105 93 - - - - - - - -
British Open Championships - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89
British Senior Championships 159 111 112 112 111 121 85 97 91 - 70 72 88 98 94 - 98 122 69
Cambridge Open Air Epee Open 45 52 48 47 37 49 47 63 44 28 26 24 28 32 25 - - 41 32
Cambridge Winter Tournament 66 57 64 74 71 74 63 67 67 51 55 58 51 57 60 57 - 65 77
Capital Open - - - - - - - - - - - - 17 17 14 - - - -
Cardiff Open - - - - - - - - - - - 12 - - - - - - -
Carrickfergus Open - 13 23 37 27 26 - 18 - - - - - - - - - - -
Chichester Open - - - - 72 72 78 58 45 30 47 35 74 46 60 - - - -
Cocks Moors Woods Epee Championships - - - - - - - 20 58 64 54 60 68 71 66 - 65 75
Coventry Open - - - - - 37 40 33 27 - - - - - - - - - -
Cumberland Open - - - - 19 16 14 14 19 12 14 15 14 - - - - - -
Derry Open 13 18 14 15 20 12 20 22 27 17 19 16 15 16 12 - - 25
Edinburgh Coupe du Nord 54 54 36 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Edinburgh Open - - - 35 49 44 43 47 - 17 30 40 28 34 - - - - -
Elite Epee Autumn Open - - - - - 85 83 93 88 93 99 - - - - - - - -
Elite Epee Spring Event - - - - - 91 77 77 90 81 91 89 - - - - - - -
Elite Epee Summer Open - - - - - - - - - 74 72 - - - - - - - -
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 1 - - - - - - - - - - - 84 - 46 39 36 - - 63
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 2 - - - - - - - - - - - 83 - 79 72 51 - - 71
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 3 - - - - - - - - - - - 59 - 91 21 - 76 - 25
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 4 - - - - - - - - - - - - 84 32 74 - 59 -
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 5 - - - - - - - - - - - - 87 76 82 - - 68
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 6 - - - - - - - - - - - - 55 74 54 - - 70
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 7 - - - - - - - - - - - - 80 34 - - - 18 -
Elite Epee Men's Series Event 8 - - - - - - - - - - - - 81 - - - - 61 -
Elite Epee Series Men's Event 9 - - - - - - - - - - - - 60 - - - - 60 -
Essex Open 137 122 129 93 96 90 88 97 99 73 72 76 62 - - - - - -
Exeter Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 42 31
Glasgow Open 46 56 54 57 59 58 67 61 57 35 59 50 56 60 50 - - - 38
Hampshire Open - - - - - - 38 52 59 54 44 41 62 51 43 - - 32
Hereford & Worcester Open 160 129 151 145 129 124 67 66 64 57 47 32 - - - - - - -
Inverclyde Open 52 33 38 44 48 52 47 53 42 18 - - - - - - - - -
Invicta Open 88 91 109 79 109 115 86 84 90 79 65 68 67 71 79 - - 80 68
Isle of Wight Open 89 81 70 72 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KCC Open - - - - - - - - - 36 - - - - - - - - -
Keele Open - - - - - - - 23 30 36 - - - - - - - - -
Lancaster Open - - - - - - - - - 20 33 27 28 19 21 42 - - -
Lancaster University Spring Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 22 -
Lancaster University Summer Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 27 28
Lancaster University Winter Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 35 -
Leeds Open - - - - - 34 60 62 56 62 65 73 - - - - - - -
Leicester Open 157 76 104 - - - - - - - - - 52 36 61 - - - -
Leon Paul Men's Epee Open - - - - - - - - 85 71 59 72 60 25 - - - 25 54
Leon Paul Summer Epee Open - - - - - - - - - 61 61 67 69 59 42 - - 29
Liverpool Open - - - - - - - - - 43 41 20 23 - - - - - -
Liverpool University Open - - - - - - - - 51 49 26 - - 19 - - - - -
London Open - - - - - - 42 55 50 43 30 27 - - - - - - -
Luton Open - - - - - - - - - - 56 30 48 - - - - - -
M8 Open - - - 23 39 45 45 47 50 42 37 37 37 - - - - - -
Manchester Open - - - - 29 39 49 - - - - - 19 - - - - - 36
Miller-Hallet Cup 141 154 122 147 138 134 116 146 138 124 127 102 105 101 93 - - 77
MOFT 87 88 92 93 100 96 102 105 107 100 89 72 83 89 80 78 - - 57
Norfolk Open 64 41 62 59 49 42 36 41 32 39 - 21 21 37 28 - - -
North West Open 8 11 10 12 - 9 18 10 24 18 20 21 9 - - - - - -
Nottingham Open 76 72 77 78 78 78 78 65 - - - - - - - - - - -
Oxfam Open - - - 28 57 - - - 21 31 17 32 23 19 25 - - - -
Plymouth Open 28 34 38 35 30 45 - - - - - - - - - - - - -
RAF Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - 40 52 - - 49
Scottish Open 65 55 59 51 52 37 45 50 55 52 44 43 47 30 40 - - 42
Sheffield Open - 21 43 72 78 83 - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Shropshire Open 67 52 50 66 75 59 50 60 46 47 31 32 30 29 32 - - 24
Sir William Perkins Cup 25 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Slough Open 171 156 122 112 120 132 120 84 117 114 96 - - - - - - - -
Surrey Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 28 - - -
Sussex Open 84 91 75 60 96 69 61 74 53 42 43 29 53 35 49 - - 66
The Highland Open 41 41 29 26 21 23 38 37 20 30 32 21 28 - 30 - - 46
TransPennine Epee - - - - - - - - - - - 26 19 24 - - - - -
Uhlmann Trophy - - - - - - - 37 61 37 36 33 - - - - - - -
Ulster Open 15 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
University of Leeds Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 22
Warwick Open - - - - - - - - - - - - 53 - - - - - -
Wellington Open - - - - - 15 36 - 35 23 28 29 16 24 12 - - - 15
Welsh Open 145 189 184 172 136 127 113 96 87 61 64 95 110 90 78 - - 100
Wenlock Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 17 -
West of England Open - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 80 54
Wrexham Open 64 61 65 79 76 64 47 53 50 40 9 10 13 - - - - - -
York Open 20 18 - - - 30 45 49 41 55 - - - - - - - - -
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Total Entries 2778 2721 2591 2559 2834 2836 2704 2779 2818 2665 2446 2203 2229 1894 1667 363 298 1509 930
Average Entries Per Competition 82 78 79 73 75 66 60 62 61 53 53 47 50 50 52 52 75 54 52

A couple of notes on this post. 2005 is somewhat of an arbitary year to start from. It just so happens I have this data readily to hand. I’ve found that any data relating to domestic fencing participation, results and rankings pre-2006 is almost impossible to find as much if it was done on paper and isn’t stored electronically or isn’t publically available.

Which competition had the most entries for mens epee in any year?
The Bristol Open in 2005 had 201 entries in the mens epee and was won by Nick Perry from Haverstock Fencing Club who beat Tom Cadman from Sussex House in the final.

Which mens epee competition has had the most entries since 2005?
The Birmingham International has had 2011 entries since 2005 and has on average 118 entries every year for mens epee. This total will probably be surpassed on the 8th of October 2023 by the Miller-Hallet Cup which currently stands at 1965 entries and a yearly average of 122.

West Of England Open 2022

Sources

https://web.archive.org/web/20080703193805/http://www.one4all.plus.com/me512e.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20140327215147/http://britishfencing.com/rankings/me_rankings_archive/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180530223233/http://www.britishfencing.com/rankings/mens_epee_senior_rankings
https://web.archive.org/web//https://www.britishfencing.com/wp-content/uploads/ranking/
https://www.britishfencing.com/results-2/mens-epee-ranking-archive/