STOURBRIDGE fencer Janey Baron missed out on gold by just one hit at the The Hampshire Open last weekend.

The Hampshire Open has now re-instated its veterans event alongside the Senior Open, which gave competitors the chance to test their skills against both younger and experienced opposition over two days.

Baron won the majority of her fights in the poules of the Women’s Veteran Epée and was one of the highest seeds going into the DE stage.

She had a comfortable passage into the semi-final, too, where she beat Caryl Oliver, one of the GB team members at the recent European Veterans’ Team championships.

Baron, having just missed out on selection for the latter event, avenged her defeat in the selection event by Oliver, taking an early lead and registering a largely un-threatened victory. Leading in the latter stages of the final against Valerie Young, a much improved fencer, she slipped up, however, and missed the gold by one hit, losing 10-9 and having to settle for silver.

Having fenced in Saturday’s Veterans event, a good number of Vets stayed around for the Senior sabre on Sunday and a large percentage of those found themselves together in the same first round poule. Peter Baron managed a slightly disappointing three victories out of his six fights and things got worse in second round against mainly much younger fencers.

This left him having to fence for a place in the Last 16.

Pitted against a very inexperienced youngster he did hat with a 15-4 victory. His fight for a Last Eight place was against West Midlands Vet Carl Moffatt who had beaten him in both the early rounds. However, just as in last year’s Shropshire open where Carl won the early encounter extremely easily, Peter turned it on when it really mattered and won their DE fight comfortably. Here, too, Peter overturned their earlier results, leading by a small margin for most of the fight and eventually securing a narrow 15-13 victory.

He had to settle for a Last Eight place, however, despite taking a big early lead against a local up-and-coming 15 year old. Then at the break the youngster’s coach was able to suggest changes to his tactics and he progressed through to the semi-final 15-11. There wasn’t even the consolation of being highest placed Vet for Peter, that honour and bronze medal going to European Teams GB team-mate Carl Morris, whom he would have met in the semi, had he made it through the quarter-final.

Meanwhile, British Veterans Fencing (BVF) hosted the 25th anniversary European Veterans Championships at the start of the month.

The event, in Medway, Kent, attracted teams from 22 countries and over 400 competitors in total – some competing for the 25th time.

Whilst Stourbridge’s Steve Potter just missed out on a place in the GB Men’s Sabre team, his wife Emma – only recently old enough to be classified a veteran – was selected for the Women’s sabre event, as was Peter Baron, who represented GB in the first team event in Berlin in 1992, for the GB grand veterans.

This latter is a relatively new category comprising a team over 60 year olds, at least one of whom must be over 70.

Peter Baron, a member of the BVF committee, was also there in an organising capacity as was his wife, Janet, so a busy week for both. The reward was the number of plaudits received by the organising team for the way the event was run. It went off with only minor glitches and not only ran to time but, on some days, finished earlier than scheduled. The event was visited by Tracey Crouch, Minister for Sport, Tourism and Heritage who seemed impressed by what she saw.

On Friday, May 5 it was the turn of the Grand Veterans Sabre. The GB team, unusually comprised one from the over 60 category – himself originally from the Black Country - and two from the over 70 category. These were Baron, reigning European individual champion and former World champion, and his friend and sometime rival Malcolm Cawton (Chilwell) also a recent World champion.

Unfortunately, GB ended up in a small poule – just three teams all of them strong ones. The team struggled to get going in the early rounds losing to both Russia and, narrowly, France despite both Baron and Cawton beating current World 70+ champion Chaboisseau in the latter match. However, fortunes then took a turn for the better and they demolished both the Czech Republic and Poland 5 – 1, with Baron completing the job against the Czechs and Cawton finishing off Poland. This left them in fifth place at the end of the event.

It was the GB Women’s Sabre team that provided the first highlight of the week in their event the following day.

Top seeds at the start of the event were Germany with GB second. They both cruised comfortably into the DE stage of the event but with the seedings now reversed. In the semi-final GB comfortably beat Austria 5 – 2 but Germany lost by the same score to 3rd seeded Russia, eventually recovering to take bronze.

The final was a tense affair, with the lead fluctuating between the 2 teams. Russia landed the first punch with the Russian fencer just scraping a 5-4 win over Potter. GB took the next two fights but the Russians were eventually 4 – 3 up with two fights left. GB levelled the scores at 4-4.

The GB team captain then gambled on a substitution and reserve Michelle Narey stepped in to clinch victory with a resounding 5 – 1 victory to give them the gold medal.

Since the age limit rule change to the effect that one moves up a category in the year of the relevant birthday, Emma Potter, at 39 still, became one of the youngest, if not the youngest competitor ever to win a European Team Gold.