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The 35th edition of the Challenge Wratislavia has finished.

Once again, this year's tournament was record-setting.

All together, 1961 fencers took part. Of these, 855 were from outside Poland. This marks the highest number of fencers in total and the highest number of foreign fencers ever to take part in one year at the Challenge Wratislavia.

Boys' foil set the record for the largest number of competitors in one weapon ever at one time (487 fencers) at the Challenge Wratislavia.

Twenty-seven countries (Argentina, Belorus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Russian, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the USA, and Poland) and 213 fencing clubs (139 from abroad, 74 from Poland) were represented. Not counting Poland, the country to field the most competitors was Russia (220 fencers), while the country whose competitors came from the most different clubs was Germany (28 clubs).

In total, there were 6932 bouts fenced.

The Allstar cup vol. 9 took place in Reutlingen, Germany last weekend.

Exceeding participation of 177 fencers from the 17 different countries foretold that it is going to be a great competition. The system of the competition was a slightly modified in comparison to the FIE. On the first day, all the fencers fought in the two group preliminary rounds from whence the best 32 advanced to the next day. The rest of the contestants had to fight out for the complement of 64’. On the second day of the competition the „repechage” method was used, meaning that fencers are still in game until they lose two matches. This method ensures that it was possible to face the same opponent twice during the competition which leaded to the interesting results.

The most successful showed up to be the German fencer Stephan Rein, who manage to win the prize of 1000 EUR although he lost in the round of 32’ against the Richard Schmidt (GER). Second place and 500 EUR took another German competitor Raphael Steinberger who lost 15:10 to Rein. Third places along with 250 EUR prizes remained in the hands of Bartosz Piasecki (NOR) and Jörg Fiedler (GER).

Congratulations!

The world top fencers went to the city of Prague for the fencing camp organized by the Czech fencing federation.  As usual, the international fencing tournament followed. More than 90 participants fought for the Cup of Letnany which ended in the possesion of Hungarian fencer Somfai Peter who didn't find a match during the competition.

The Hungarians prevailed tooking gold and both bronze places. Second place remained for the domestic country.

1. Somfai Peter (HUN)

2. Beran Jiri (CZE)

3. Boczko Gabor (HUN)

3. Imre Geza (HUN)

Photos Vojta Doubek