Excalibur 2009, May 2-3, Bath
Middlesex finish third overall.
Gianluca Farina won individual men's epee. The men's sabre team finished top with Surrey on points but lost out on medals as Surrey won when they met. Valerian Langton finished second in men's individual sabre, and the women's epee team finished 2=.
Overall county placings
1. Somerset (22 points)
2. Surrey (19 points)
3. Middlesex (18 points)
4. Hampshire (16 points)
5= Cornwall and H&W (12 points)
7= Devon and Kent (8 points)
9. Leicester (7 points)
10. Warwickshire (5 points)
11. Dyfed (3 points)
12. Gloucester (0 points)
CAPTAIN'S REPORT
The Midlesex squad welcomed six new members this year - Yolande Deane (City FC, sabre), Lucinda Gallant (Haverstock, epee), Yasemin Koc (City FC, sabre), Charlie Kwok (King's College London, foil), Valerian Langton (Scimitar, sabre), and Alex Lim, (Salle Boston, foil).
Our epee and sabre teams made a bright start on Saturday morning winning all their first and second matches, with new recruits Yolande and Yasemin picking up their first fights at Excalibur in the sabre. Both foil teams had a harder time against their first opponents Kent but soon found better form in their second matches against Warwickshire.
The men's sabre team kept up their momentum, and after beating Leicester notched up their first significant win beating Cornwall 5-4 with Valerian winning all three fights, and Nick two. Nick then retired for the rest of the weekend to be replaced by Antoine.
Meanwhile the women's foil team were having a different experience facing Cornwall as Charlie had gone over her ankle in spectacular style. Adam, Gaurav and Alex made up for this setback with a storming 7-2 victory over Cornwall in men's foil. Some post sabre match tomfoolery ended up with another injury, with Ellie suffering from concussion and having to sit out the last two matches of the day. Tonya took up the anchor role and won all her fights against Hampshire and then Hereford & Worcester.
At the end of the first day men's sabre had not lost a match and Valerian had only dropped one fight out of eighteen. Both epee teams had only lost one match each all day, and importantly had fared well against strong teams from Surrey and Somerset to ensure that overall we were level with both counties at nine fights each.
Sunday continued well for men's sabre including a hard won win over Somerset with Simon winning all three fights including the only victory over Neil Hutchison all weekend. Unfortunately the cleansweep was to come to an end as exhausted from their hard work against Somerset, the team lost to Surrey.
Both epee teams took Cornwall 6-3 sealing our overall victory over last year's second placers, while Amy won our final fight against Hampshire in women's foil thus securing overall victory over our Southern neighbours.
We needed to win our last matches of the day in epee against Hereford & Worcester if we were to finish in a top three position overall. The women completed their match first, winning 6-3 with Lucinda picking up all three of her fights. This left the men a target of just four but they didn't settle for anything less than victory and after thrilling final fights from Toby, James and Gianluca, won 5-4.
Overall the performance was solid and bodes well for future tournaments. Middlesex have now finished third place four times since 2001, and finished second place in 2006.
Nick Woolley, May 2009
Outstanding individual performances; Gianluca Farina 1st m.epee, Valerian Langton 2nd m.sabre, Tonya Cheatham 3rd= w.sabre, Simon Donald 4th= m.sabre.
Team positions; m.foil-4th=, w.foil-9th, m.epee-3rd=, w.epee-2nd=, m.sabre-1st=, w.sabre-3rd=
Thanks to Simon Donald and NLSC for the loan and transportation of the scoring equipment.
MIDDLESEX TEAM AT EXCALIBUR 2009
Men's foil - Gaurav Gupta, Alex Lim, Adam Wood
Women's foil - Amy Hyman, Charlie Kwok, Dawn Townsend
Men's epee - Toby Blench, Gianluca Farina, James Hoggarth
Women's epee - Flora Colmar, Lucinda Gallant, Harriet Lamborn, Juliet Perry
Men's sabre - Simon Donald, Valerian Langton, Antoine Ubaghs, Nick Woolley
Women's sabre - Tonya Cheatham, Ellie Collier, Yolande Deane, Yasemin Koc
