O.P.S. epee club had 4 fencers attending this flagship event. In the mens event (3 OPS fencers) with a full 30% cut after the first round (down to 64), Josh Myers, in his first British Championships, managed to get hits on all his opponents, however finished in 87th place. Fraser Stephen-Smith won 2 of his 6 matches, however missed out on getting through the cut by 1 hit and placed 66th.
Chris Howser had a 3-3 win loss record and was ranked 38th after the first round. In the round of 64, chris faced 27th seed David Stewart-Watson, who had beaten Chris 5-2 in the first round, however Chris started strongly to build a solid lead and finished the match with a 15-9 victory. In he round of 32 Chris’s opponent was number 6 seed Tomas Curren-Jones from Brixton. In a thrilling contest in which Tomas lead for much of the match, Chris again clawed his way back to lead 14-12, however two hits for Tomas took the fight to the last hit and a well timed counter-attach gave Chris a 15-14 victory. In his next match again Chris started slowly against Shetland’s Chris Rocks, but again as time went on Chris pulled back a 6 hit deficit to record a 15-13 victory to reach the quarter finals. In the quarter finals Chris faced Nick Perry from Haverstock and after a close match that only ahad a hit between the fencers for the first 6 minutes, Nick pulled away in the final 30 seconds when Chris had to pust to catch up hits. A final placing of 8th is pretty good going as Chris generally coaches rather than fences at club.
Kate Howser was the clubs only representative in the women’s event and won 3 of 5 matches in round 1 to be seeded 25th. A solid 15-12 win over Helen Dack took Kate to the top 32, however she then met London Olympian Corinna Lawrence who knocked Kate out and went on to win the whole event. Kate’s final position of 25th is also very impressive as Kate has never trained properly for Epee and had not picked up an epee since the last competition she attended.