BOURGES, France (March 31) - A record 105 countries will be represented on the pistes of the CREPS sports facility in the central French city of Bourges over the next 10 days, when hundreds of the world’s top young fencers will face off for the title of cadet and junior world champion.
The Cadet and Junior World Championships run April 1-10, when medals will be up for grabs in 19 disciplines.
A total of 1,310 fencers have registered to take part in the championships, just shy of the record of 1,390 set by Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 2014. But the number of countries represented, 105, exceeds Plovdiv’s number by three.
The event will feature junior men’s and women’s foil, epee and sabre for individual and team events, as well as cadet individual disciplines and mixed events.
The cadets fence from April 1-4, while the juniors are on April 5-10. The semifinals and finals in each discipline will be held at the Palais des Sports du Prado.
Among the continents, Europe, unsurprisingly, brings the largest contingent of 692, with Asia supplying 322 competitors. From there Americas there will be 210 fencers, while an impressive 86 athletes made the trip from Africa.
Bourges is a city in central France on the Yèvre River, known for its Gothic Cathedral of St. Etienne. France is a global leader in fencing, yet this is the first time that the country has held a competition of this size since 1995.
The Cadet and Junior Fencing World Championships is one of the key events in the FIE calendar. Last year’s event held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, attracted 1124 fencers from 85 countries.
The championships mark the culmination of the FIE Training Camp for 50 young fencers from around the world. The camp is held each year just before the Cadet and Junior World Championships.
This year, the camp was split between Bourges, where Gennady Tyshler, the President of the FIE Coaches Council, has worked with the sabre fencers; and Melun, where Patrice Lhôtellier, Jean-Noël Hautefaye, Natalia Conrad and Dmitry Rejzlin trained foil and epee fencers, respectively.
The FIE Training Camp and the Cadet and Junior World Championships carry special significance this year, coming just a few months ahead of the Rio Olympics where the young athletes’ idols will be battling it out for Olympic medals.
A live stream will be available on the FIE’s YouTube channel.
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