Sophie Williams Blog

Sparring in italy

I started off 2011 with a trip to Italy, with my fencing bag of course! First up was a weeklong training camp, where I got to spar with both the Junior Italian and the Junior Russian teams. This served as an excellent warm up for my penultimate U20 international event, also in Italy, that weekend.
I was fairly nervous going into the competition, but I had a good ranking which boosted my confidence. After the first round I had won five fights and lost one, so I was seeded 17th going into the knockout rounds.  I had a bye through the Last 128 round, but then unfortunately drew Marton (Hungary) the world no. 5, who had obviously had a bad first round. It was a close match all the way, but she just had the edge to win 15-14. Although my placing was disappointing (39th overall) I am happy with how I fenced and just had a bad draw.
Now I’m heading back into lots of training in preparation for the Senior season, starting next month, as well as the Junior World Championships in April.