Our Blade Club fencers flew to Manama, Bahrain for the Asian Juniors and Cadets 2024, as part of Team Singapore contingent. The Cadets and Junior fencers included Angellena Wong (Cadet Women’s Foil), Mika Wong (Cadet Men’s Epee), Azanius Nua (Cadet Men’s Epee), Ian Ho (Junior Men’s Epee), Lemuel Huang (Cadet Men’s Foil), and Elle Koh (Cadet and Junior Women’s Epee).
The athletes fenced valiantly in their events, putting in some excellent performances throughout the week or so that they were there. A particular highlight was the efforts by Mika and Azanius to help do Singapore proud in the Cadet Men’s Epee Team event. Singapore narrowly lost to Kazakhstan 44-45 but our boys help to keep the team competitive. At one stage, Mika even managed to pull off a crazy 12-5 win in one of his bouts!
A silver medal for Team Singapore came from Elle’s performance in the individual Women’s Epee Cadet event. It was a good result, but a bittersweet moment for Elle Koh. The initial injury was sustained mid-way through the preliminary poule round, against a very fast Korean fencer – as Elle was quickly retreating from an incoming attack, she felt her knee buckle and fell to the ground. The damage done was not immediately obvious, but the swelling and pain that ensued was very ominous.
Elle was tended to by a physiotherapist, who told her that it was likely to be a serious injury. Nevertheless, after wrapping up the knee tightle and immobilizing it, she chose to fight on. Elle managed to win all her remaining bouts to end the poules with a good seeding.
With her knee wrapped up and unable to lunge or fleche, Elle had to fence the remainder of the day with a set of defensive and counter-offensive actions. Her resilience shown through as she proceeded to use her defensive strategy successfully to beat her opponents and reached the quarterfinals, where she had to face off against a very tall and imposing Chinese opponent. Despite the reach disparity and the immobility, she was able to stave off the cautious opponent and win narrowly by running the clock out against the opponent. She held off a strong challenge from teammate Roxane to reach the final, where she finally lost against another Chinese fencer who, after seeing her compatriot lose in the quarters, approached the bout much more aggressively to exploit Elle’s inability to retreat quickly enough. At 11-15, the final bout was just a bridge too far and Elle had to settle for Silver.
Unfortunately, this also meant that Elle would be unable to fence the Cadet team event, nor fence at all for the Junior individual or team events. Even worse – Elle would be unable to take part in the World Juniors and Cadets, scheduled a month later. The WJCC was the event that she was really preparing for and targeting; the AJCC was to be the warm-up competition.
In the aftermath of the competition, the MRI showed the extent of the injury – a complete ACL tear and severe damage to the knee meniscus. Despite the diagnosis, Elle remains in good spirits and will work hard to ensure a smooth recovery to competition fitness.