Olympic Fencing Brush with Fame

At about the last national fencing competition I went to, I was chatting with some folks in the over-40 division. I had pretty much realized it wasn't worth traveling to national tournaments any more since I could only ever enter one event. And I wasn't all that good at that event either. So it's lots of trouble and expense for a half day of fencing. But I was 38 or 39 at the time, and I realized that once I was over 40, I could enter the masters category events too.

But before I could make it over 40, I lost interest in local competitions and pretty much chucked the fencing thing. But I do plan to get back to it, still.

One of the people I was watching fence in the over-40s foil was a Canadian woman. There were a lot of reasons she caught my eye. First, she was a pretty kickass fencer, and I wondered why she was in the masters competition instead of one of the open divisions. (She might have been entered in multiple divisions.) Also, she had a Chinese accent but her jacket said she was Canadian. And she was pretty: long black hair, graceful and powerful looking. She made a nice contrast to the slightly nerdy older guy who was chatting me up trying to talk me into how cool the over-40 division was.

Earlier this week, I checked out the Olympics for the first time and found out the women's Foil competition was live online. So I go to the website, watch some video, and cruise through the earlier results, and there's a familiar name. Luan. Who is this woman I saw at the tournament years ago. She's 50 now, and on the Canadian team. She made it through the first round of eliminations in the women's foil competition, which is not too shabby.

Turns out Luan Jujie won China's first and only fencing gold medal in 1984. When I saw her she was probably getting back into shape to make the Canadian team.

There's even a human-interest article on the NBC website about her. (OMG! She's old! And female! And she fences! And she used to be a Communist!)

So I guess over-40 fencing might not be so bad after all.