Olympic Fencing Athletes Left Begging for their Money Again…

Last year, Sports Illustrated wrote an extensive story about the incompetence of the US Fencing Federation and the stepping in by the US Olympic Committee to ensure that the Fencing team received its funding: “USOC to rescue Wayward Fencing Association” by Brian Cazeneuve.

This year, there is a new fencing administration, but the same question is still being asked by its top athletes. 

“Where is our money?”

The USOC funded Athlete stipends that could have begun as early as January 1 if the USFA had finished paperwork and gotten contracts to athletes have still yet to be received.

Deadlines not met?  Hmm, this is starting to seem familiar to me for some reason…

We’ve been pretty patient for 2-months…we were told that contracts would come last week by the USFA but then they failed to materialize with no word about why they weren’t sent.  Sending weekly emails about money on behalf of myself and my teammates  is an activity I hoped would have been a thing of the past.(I guess not)

US Olympic Fencing team with Kobe Bryant before Opening Ceremonies. I wonder if he has these kind of problems? Doubtful

When the stipends do come, we will be paid for the prior months, but in the meantime many of us are running up debts.   To top it off, these expenses include paying  for our hotels on several fencing trips that were suppossed to be covered except that things were not handled in a timely or correct manner on this front either.  Sigh.

I sent an email to the Executive Director saying literally: “HELP ME! I HAVE BILLS TO PAY!” 

He responded that the contracts still needed to be finalized and the USOC this and that… 

 Shifting the blame on someone else?  Hmm, this also seems like a story I may have heard before…

I sadly cannot report that there has been any upgrade in athlete support thus far.  It’s very frustrating.  I want to focus on competing and training, but instead I’ve got this other huge worry to still think about…

PS Thank you to everyone whom has supprted us throughout the years! You’ve been amazing and …

PPS If anyone out there wants to support or sponsor a great team of athletes we’d love your support!!!

Fencing, Synchronized Swimming, Water Polo and Others Coming to USA TV

Great news for Olympic sports like fencing, rowing, cycling, swimming, synchronized swimming, water polo and others named in the recently posted press release from NBC.   NBC Universal Sports is expanding its coverage and just released information that they will be covering the world championships of many of the sports no usually seen except during Olympic years. 

How do you think this might impact fencing and other sports?

Press Release Below:

LOS ANGELES – February 17, 2008 – Universal Sports, the preeminent multiplatform destination for Olympic-related sports programming, announced today the addition of 20 new television markets, boosting its distribution to more than 45 million television households.  This announcement made by Claude Ruibal, CEO of Universal Sports and Gary Zenkel, President, NBC Olympics, coincides with the beginning of the one-year countdown to the Vancouver Olympic Games.
 
This distribution announcement comes on the heels of a 100-plus hour broadcast by Universal Sports of the Alpine World Ski Championships where American Lindsey Vonn, who will lead the U.S. Ski Team at the 2010 Vancouver Games, won two gold medals.  This is the first of many important World Championships that Universal Sports will broadcast this year, in addition to many top National Championship events including the U.S. Olympic Trials in Curling on Feb. 27-28 where the U.S. Olympic Curling team for Vancouver will be determined.
 
Universal Sports, which originally launched as World Championship Sports Network in October 2006, has delivered over 16,000 hours of Olympic sports programming to U.S. consumers on television combined with an additional 20,000 plus hours of programming online.
 
“We are delivering on the pledge we made to our consumers and partners when we launched Universal Sports, and we are further solidifying Universal Sports as the key destination in the U.S. for major national and international competition in Olympic-related sports,” said Ruibal.  “Our partnership with NBC Universal has been key to helping us succeed in making incredible sports available to every consumer in the U.S.”
 
“Many of the stars of the Beijing Olympics will continue to excite and amaze as will the future stars of the Vancouver and London Games, and the platform to watch these incredible athletes compete as they build toward the next Games is Universal Sports and UniversalSports.com,” said Zenkel.  “This recent growth in the reach of our network, and the continued expansion we expect throughout 2009, will ensure that these great athletes and their stories can be followed all around the country.”
 
UNIVERSAL SPORTS WIDESPREAD AVAILABILITY: Universal Sports is now available in eight of the top 10 DMAs including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Francisco and Washington, D.C  The latest expansion includes launches in the first quarter in Houston, Miami, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Jacksonville.

2009 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS ON UNIVERSAL SPORTS:  Universal Sports will offer exclusive broadcast coverage of Winter and Summer World Championship events highlighted by the following:

Winter Sports                                  Summer Sports
Alpine ski*                                        Swimming*
Freestyle ski                                    Diving, Water Polo
Nordic (Ski Jumping, Cross                Track & Field (Athletics)*
Country, Nordic Combined)                  Gymnastics*
Bobsled & Skeleton                         Cycling
Ice Hockey                                       Rowing
Snowboarding                                  Fencing
Luge                                                 Badminton
Speed Skating                                 Water Ski / Wakeboard
Curling                                             Canoe/Kayak
Karate                                              Synchronized Swimming
 
* Joint coverage with NBC Sports

For more information on current programming schedules and channel listings please visit www.UniversalSports.com

30,000 Hits and Counting! (Thank You Readers!)

 

February was really a breakthrough month for this blog!   This is the first month we’ve had 8000+ reads and we’ve now crossed the 30,000 mark for overall reads!   Yeah! 

The blog is now “syndicated” or carried on usfencing.org, the US Olympic website, Manhattan Fencing Center and recently, the famous photographer Patrick McMullan, has agreed to run some of our entries on his site! (More on this exciting news later!)  

The readers of fencing.net have also been hugely supportive, as have our favorite writers and friends Scott Buchheit of guest of a guest and Danica Lo from the NY Post.  A special shout out to Rachelle and guestofaguest.com for being such a great champion!  And, to Liz and Margie for their support early on in this growth process.   Courtney Winninger at the USFA has also been extremely helpful geting the blog up on the USFA website and helping with technical support. 

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Also, special thanks to my friend and teammate Jason Rogers who has written several articles and helped tremendously with editing and content. 

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I can’t forget my Mom for always letting me know when I misspell something or need a grammar correction! Thanks Mom!

Thank you everyone!!!

Tim

Highlights:
Fencing is a Sexy Sport: Part II Ukrainian Women’s Saber Team (Most Read Post)
Morehouse, Rogers, Williams Team up with Fashion Blog (2nd Most Read Post)
New Air Jordan Shoes Based on Fencing!  (3rd Most Read) Post
Fencing is a Sexy Sport (1st Blog post)
Dreams Do Come True (My Favorite Post)
6 Books that Helped me Qualify for the Olympics (Most Comments)

Plovdiv Grand Prix Team Results

Plovdiv Bulgaria Team Final

Posted by Jason Rogers

Final results!

Gold: Italy (Montano, Occhuzzi, Pastore and Tarantino)

Silver: Hungary (Illiasz, Szylagi, Desci and Lontay)

Bronze: France (Sanson, Apithy, Lopez and Anstett)

I guarantee that I spelled at least 3 of those names wrong

US Men’s Sabre Report:

Even though the US Men’s Sabre Team (Rogers, Igoe, Williams and Homer) had a bit of a tough day, it wasn’t all bad. Our fencing is really coming together, and we are showing that we have incredible potential moving forward in these next four years.

Our first round match was with Japan, which is a team that you can never assume will be easy to beat because they move like little ninjas! Seriously, I am not kidding these guys are really fast and getting better by the day. Nevertheless, our first round loss to them was a bit of an “oops,” shall we call it, but let’s not dwell on these things.

We continued to show decent fencing throughout the rest of the day, beating Kazakstan and then Ukraine (which was our first time doing that in recent history I will note).

 Then we had a very strange bout with Poland losing by a decent margin and finally finishing 10th place. Dimitri Guy (our coach for the trip) encapsulated it best today when he said, “If we are judging by the result, we didn’t do so good, but if we are talking about our fencing and our potential for the future, I think day was a great indication of big things to come.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. We will continue to do what we are doing, gaining experience along the way and smoothing out the kinks that have developed in the last couple months of training lightly.

Onward and Upwards….Jason signing off from Bulgaria…I have to go take a nap, as our bus is leaving at 2 am for the airport…yes, I am serious…sigh…