By Brendan McConnell
It’s been four years since six Ottawa fencers took home a total of nine medals at the Canada Summer Games in PEI, and it’s also been four years for the local club to set its sights on sweeping the podium this time around.
With five Ottawa-based fencers on the docket for this year’s Canada Games in Sherbrooke, Ottawa Fencing head coach Paul ApSimon says he has a very clear vision in mind for how he’d like his athletes to perform.
“Ideally each of these athletes come back with 2 medals—an individual and a team medal,” says the leader of the combined Excalibur and RA fencing clubs.
On this year’s list are Jenny Zhao, Alastair Keyes, François Provencher, Arthur Scharf and Joseph Wright, all of whom had to battle strong athletes from across Ontario this summer to earn a spot on the team. These five athletes make up a third of Team Ontario’s fencing entries, and over half of the men’s team.
“The five on the team are definitely five of the hardest workers in the club,” ApSimon notes.
First-place focus for fencers
Among the relative veterans on the team is François Provencher, a second-year uOttawa business major who’s been fencing with the club for close to a decade. Provencher is fresh off a 52nd-place finish at the FISU world student games in Kazan, Russia – Canada’s best result in men’s foil – and is looking to ride this momentum into the Summer Games.
“With the experience I have from going to Russia, I’m planning on going there and performing my best,” says Provencher. “I’m going for gold, basically.”
Arthur Scharf, a junior-aged sabre athlete, will be going into the Games as one of the youngest competitors. He’s primed to experience Canada’s “mini-Olympics” and believes at least a bronze medal could be in the cards.
“I’m not really someone who gets too excited about tournaments but it’s a really powerfully moving experience to be going to something of this magnitude,” Scharf highlights. “It’s going to be interesting – whether I get killed or not, it’s going to be cool.”
Scharf took up fencing six years ago in his native Saskatchewan, and moved to Ottawa only last year, which has proven beneficial to his development thanks to quality training.
“The fencing here in Ottawa is big,” Scharf explains. “It’s definitely worthwhile to be here at a hub like this.”
The sole female fencer from Ottawa going to Canada Summer Games this year is Zhao, who began fencing 10 years ago at the suggestion of her mother’s friend, a Chinese Olympic fencer for China at the 2004 Athens Games.
Now 16, Zhao has attended North American and Canada Cups as well as national championships, but she says the Canada Games will be the highlight of her career so far.
“I’m so excited,” says Zhao, who wants a piece of the podium. “They hyped it up so I’m kind of expecting a lot. We already got our clothes and they look really nice.”