Many previous winners of the junior world championships have gone on to be stars of the senior scene but the transition is by no means a certainty. Equally, there are many fencers that looked decent but nothing special as juniors but went on to huge success at senior level. Looking back at fencers from my own time in fencing provides examples of all these. Alex Koch of West Germany (as it was then) was one of the group of fast, strong and aggressive men’s foilists from that country that dominated junior men’s foil in the late 80’s (yes, I am that old). He won the junior world championships in South Bend (USA) in 1988 and although he failed to defend his junior title the following year, he did take the senior world title in 1989 and again 1993. At the 1989 junior worlds in Athens, the men’s foil was won by Ye Chong of China. Nobody had ever heard of him because he hadn’t fenced in any of the junior world cups and, while he went on to have a decent senior career, he never got close to claiming a senior world title. Meanwhile in the quarter-finals of those same junior world championships was a Soviet left-hander with a weird sense of timing and a ridiculously short lunge - it would have been difficult to spot young Sergei Goloubitski as a future three times world senior champion and the dominant men’s foilist of the 90s. Take a look through the results of almost any junior world championships - any year, any weapon, any gender - and it will likely produce that same mixture of “they were amazing and always looked like being a star”, “they looked amazing but whatever happened to them” and “I barely remember them as juniors but look at them now!” The trick, of course, is to be able to tell one from the other when they’re still competing as juniors. And, for me, that is a big part of the appeal of watching junior and cadet fencing (as well as the sheer quality of the fencing from young athletes). It's bit like being able to say you saw a band play live before they made it big! For all these reasons I can’t wait for this year’s Cadet and Junior World Championships at the beginning of April!