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Fencing Pictures is proud to have Bill Ward on the FP Team! Bill is a television videographer/ editor specializing in high definition programming. His work has appeared on The Discovery Channel, HGTV, The Food Network, PBS and other networks. Bill and his two children, Rebecca and William, admit to some familiarity with a saber. St. Petersburg Blog:A “W” is a “W”…. You know your weapon program is struggling a bit when the best thing to happen all day at the World Championships is having the referee pull a black card.US Women’s epee has a rough start in the 2007 competition. Yesterday, Maya Lawrence fails to advance to the round of 64. Today, Kelley Hurley takes a bow in the opening round. Lacey Burt hangs tough with Lubov Shutova of Russia all the way to the end, but can’t quite close the gap and retires 13-15 in the 64 on a double touch. Shutova will eventually make it to the quarterfinals, before losing in extra innings just before the priority period expired. Courtney Hurley advances to the round of 32 without losing a touch. But then, she fails to score a point, either. When the round of 64 is called, Courtney marches to the strip, but her opponent, 30th seeded Maarika Vosu of Estonia, is nowhere to be found. They wait. The clock ticks. Minutes later, Vosu arrives at the strip and sits down, apparently waiting for her gear to be delivered. She is escorted off to the holding area where weapons are sequestered, and arrives back at the strip a short time later. Vosu starts to hook up, the ref looks at his watch and BAM! The black card is held aloft. USA wins! USA wins! And that’s as good as it got for the Americans. Courtney draws the tough Li Na of China for her next DE, and gets stopped in the 32. Na advances all the way to the semi-finals tonight, and Courtney gets to go to lunch early. Not that it was any easier for some of the other big names in women’s epee. Canada’s wild child, 7th seeded Sherraine Schalm, opens up a 4-0 lead on Megumi Harada of Japan, then watches her nearly comatose opponent come to life and rip off a 7-1 run. Sherraine never recovers and is out in the 64. French powerhouse Laura Flessel-Colovic survives one priority sudden death match in the 64, but can’t repeat the trick during the next priority extra period, and she is done in the 32. After that, the action really heated up. How hot was it, you ask? Burning hot, to be precise. Between the round of 16 and the quarterfinals, the audience was settling in when smoke began erupting from the lighting grid way above the stadium floor. Quicker than you could say Greek fencer Niki-Katerina Sidiropoulou-Christodoulou's name, a burst of flames ignited, sending a pall of greasy electrical smoke mushrooming high into the ceiling. Fortunately, there were plenty of German engineers on hand to diagnose the problem: “Der flamen mit spitzensparken!” they all agreed. The spitzensparken continued to streak down to the smoldering carpet for nearly a half hour. The high wire ladder guy from a few days ago was nowhere to be found…not that any of us would have liked to see him have to climb high into the smoke-filled ceiling on that absurdly tiny ladder, hoisting a fire extinguisher one-handed while sparks and electrical arcs showered down around him. Actually, I think all the fencing photojournalists who were gleefully snapping photos of the inferno would have been delighted to see the ladder guy attempt just such a stunt. Instead, we were treated to about 15 minutes of stadium personnel vigorously spraying their fire extinguishers on the burning carpet while a frantic crew assembled a 25-foot tower of scaffolding. Once the scaffolding was in place, two intrepid firefighters directed dual streams of extinguisher smoke directly onto the bundle of flaming cables. There was thunderous applause from the crowd braving the clouds of acrid smoke filling the venue. There was raucous laughter when the initial whooshes of extinguisher spray completely failed to smother the flames. It was a tough crowd, but then, it takes a tough crowd to sit through three 3-minute periods of epee so the 3-3 score can be finally settled in sudden-death priority…usually on 3 frantic fleches in the final 3 seconds. Eventually, the flames were extinguished without massive loss of life or casualties. In the meantime, the last 8 epee fencers were hustled over to the venue area set aside for pools, and the quarterfinals were completed without further combustive mishaps. Tomorrow, high octane men’s saber lights up the arena. Figuratively, we hope. By Bill Ward
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