Haven’t had time for much rigorous analysis lately. Hopefully will be able to get to the Budapest stuff in proper detail on the weekend. In the mean time, here’s a brilliant pair of exchanges from a 2012 world cup semifinal between Bolade Apithy and Junghwan Kim. Every so often I get an earful from some crusty old salt about how there ain’t no parrying in this here modern sabre. To which I say Sir, here is why I respectfully disagree:

This first one was early in the match, and Kim plays a beautifully cool distance game.

In the first half, he unleashed a perfectly calibrated 8/0 run on Apithy, involving some precision timing in the 4m and a whole lot of his hallmark infuriating remise hits past what should have been a perfectly good parry.

As Apithy gained a bit of steam in the second half and started fighting back, Kim got a bit rattled. This fantastic hit, right at the close of the bout, has a very similar overall structure to the first, but instead of aborting the initial march Kim over-commits, coming down quite hard and injuring his ankle. Not the kind of guy to let a thing like a twisted ankle stop him from fighting, he kept going.

After a medical break, he pulled it back together to win on the next point, but was forced to withdraw from the final against Szilagyi.

The full bout with Apithy is here, thanks to CyrusofChaos.

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