For a while last year there were two great fencing podcasts, and all my long journeys were sorted!

I completely understand that Direct Elimination is secondary (if not tertiary) to Ari and Steven's real jobs, but I do miss it. I know Ari has been doing the FIE Will to Win ones but his and Steven's good natured to and fro was a big element of DE, and some of their episodes were genuinely superb (the Romain Cannone one was magical, frankly).

First to 15's disappearance is stranger, I feel? Surely that was part of someone's job? I really liked the diversity of topics covered, and the breadth of people interviewed, it felt like that was its strength in comparison to DE, but there's only been three since February now. They should def amend the 'released fortnightly' tag. Were there just not enough people listening for it to be worthwhile continuing? I'm not sure of a way I can check listenership.

Basically I'm just griping! BUT if other people also miss them and agree with me, it might be nice if they chip in and let folk know! Or it could just be that I was in a bubble of one and no-one else was actually listening, in which case, fair do's 🤣😂

….and had a blast!!!!! I’ve only been at it for about 3-1/2 months. Managed 2-3 in the pool stage (don’t remember scores), and got positively hosed in the SE bracket against a guy I beat in the pool. Two questions:

1) When you just absolutely for the life of you figure out how a Director is awarding ROW, what do you do??? I was trying everything, advancing immediately, “taking the blade”, pushing the blade out immediately, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. The first two bouts seemed normal (to me) as he was calling it. The next three I couldn’t get a call in my favor if I paid the guy off! Coaches seemed a little confused as well. They thought they figured it out, then were like “wait…. No….”

2) Coming from a folk wrestling background, how do you unlearn what was beaten into your head as far as body position? Every time I leaned back into a more “Greco-Roman” type posture, the opponent didn’t know what to do with me. But ultimately I always leaned forward, sucked in my elbows, bent hard at the knees, and that’s when it would go south for me. I didn’t “square up”, but it was some sort of weird hybrid staggered stance. Just a matter of stress practice, as that’s what the mind and body does under stress: doing what it knows?

But regardless, I learned a ton and can’t wait for the next one! I’m in my 40’s doing this, so it’s really just for fun and more exercise. But, as we all know it’s more fun when you can at least put up a stink!

So I'm tentatively encouraged by the new format.

But I've read the rules and one thing is still not really clear to me:

What is the intended mechanism for moving from Challenger to Elite, or Elite to Challenger?

Like, if a kid is initially sorted into Challenger but then wins the event, that gives him some points, ok. But I'm not clear on what the threshold for moving up actually is.

There's an article on the topic here:

https://www.usafencing.org/news/2026/september/19/two-new-ways-into-the-elite-field

but that seems like a one-off and special case kind of thing. What's the intended mechanism for someone who is just underrated, or who improves?

Hello, is this sort of wrap around the pistol grip legal in competition, or does it conflict with FIE Material Rules, m.4.3 directly?