Monday 16 Feb

Visited the Penang International Sports Arena (PISA) for the first time - massive arena with standard international set up of four pistes (red, green, blue and yellow), two end to end on each side of the central raised finals piste. At one end an extra 4 pistes are provided for warming up and overflow in the poules round.

We arrived about 10am and it was already hot and humid outdoors. Inside was not much better. The air conditioning has been promised to be operative from Tuesday, for the first events. Some final warm up practice, warm up lessons and delivery of equipment for weapon control was completed along with "Managers" and "Referees" meetings. Laura performed a sterling effort with weapons control in managing to have the equipment returned by 4:30pm.

The heat in the venue was sweltering - after one and a half hours two litres of water later sesion was at an end. So back to the hotel for the fianl rest period before the first events begin tomorrow, Tuesday.

First day will be Men's Epee and Women's Sabre with 34 and 26 fencers respectively. We have two fencers only first up on day one, William Bishop and Gideon van Zyl.

William's 31st place at the Montreal Junior World cup late last year earned him 4 points and has moved him up to the desirable 6th place seeding. Though Gideon is ranked 8th equal, he is along with a large number of others as unranked fencers and has drawn quite a satisfactory mid-ranking position.

The poules for tomorrow have been drawn and posted:
Women's Sabre 26 fencers in 2 poules of 6 and 2 poules of 7.
Men's Epee has 4 poules of 7 and 1 poule of 6. William and Gideon both have poules of 7.

Poule No.2
Kristian RADFORD (AUS) - 26
Gideon van ZYL (NZL) - 8
Gerard SING (SIN) - 8
Dinash DINBJH (IND) - 31
Greg CARTY (ENG) - 8
Gareth Thomas (WAL) - 2
George MELHUISH (GUE) - 31

Poule No.5
James ALLEN (ENG) - 5
William BISHOP (NZL) - 6
Nahrig NDOR (MAS) - 8
Mathew ALBERS (IOM) - 8
PREMANANDA (IND) - 26
SO Haimi HASMIE (MAS) - 26
Nicholas DAVISON (AUS) - 34

Identifiers: AUS Australia, ENG England, GUE Guernsey, IND INdia, IOM Isle of Man, JER Jersey, MAS Malaysia, NIG NIgeria, NIR Northern Ireland, NZL New Zealand, SAR South Africa, SIN Singapore, SIL Sierra Leone, WAL Wales

Fencing begins here on Tuesday at 9am (4pm NZST) with the final being completed at 6pm (11pm NZST). We will make every effort to pass through as much of the results as possible. We think there will be very little information available on-line or close to real time so we will endevour to provide a "round up" each evening, Malaysia time for our early morning NZ time devotees.