Home » Watch » 06ITA World Championships in Torino » Torino Blog » Sept 30, 2006

September 30th, 2006


Fencing Pictures is proud to have Bill Ward on the FP Team! Bill is a television videographer/ editor specializing in high definition programming. His work has appeared on The Discovery Channel, HGTV, The Food Network, PBS and other networks. He is currently at work on a documentary chronicling the events of the 2006 season of Women's Saber team, culminating at the World Championships in Korea. Bill and his two children, Rebecca and William, admit to some familiarity with a saber.

First the good news...

The bull-necked American agents in the hotel last night were NOT coming to arrest us for airline bottle violations. It seems there had been rumors that our hotel was the site of one of the CIA secret prisons for enemy combatants. Not to worry, we’re told, it is merely the location of a top-secret plastic surgery clinic that is clandestinely turning out Karl Rove look-alikes for campaign trail appearances back in the States.

Quite the relief. Sort of.

Meanwhile…..

Italians are supposed to be expressive. It comes from all the carbs found in pasta. At the start of the first day of competition at the 2006 Senior World Championships, though, emotions were out of control at the credential desk.

You expect to see athletes and coaches upset at their missing documents, and occasionally an Uncle Luigi pitching a fit because they won’t grant him an all access pass for taking family pictures with his 1952 Leica rangefinder camera. You don’t normally expect the volunteer staff to be in tears, or making rude gestures and dismissive hand signals to people wanting their credentials.

And it’s only day 1.

Apparently credentials and tickets are in short supply. Not every personal coach and trainer is being credentialed, and are instead being told to buy tickets to their events. Of course, word on the floor is that the tickets have been oversold by a thousand people or so for Sunday and Mondays events…so the folks denied credentials CAN’T buy their ticket into the venue.

I guess it’s good in the long run that so many spectators want to get into the arena, provided you’re one of the ones actually holding a ticket.

I’m in Torino helping out Guillermo Alger and the Fencing Pictures folks with the video efforts for slow-motion replay and material for DVDs following the championships. At this 2006 championship event, there will be four HDV video cameras providing instant replay for the director at each of the four major strips, plus the finals. In addition, there are two monitors at the end of each pair of strips for the replay official, who can be called into play by the fencers during the bouts.

All of the cameras are bolted onto jib arms to lift them above the director’s head, and to be able to follow the action anywhere on the strip. Most of the cameras at the top 32 to top 8 level will be manned by Torino volunteers, so we spent much of today calibrating the cameras and letting the volunteers practice with the jibs during Men’s Saber pool action.

Here’s what I told the volunteers:

Rule #1: Don’t whack the director in the head with the camera.
Rule #2: Always follow the action, unless it requires violating rule #1.
Rule #3. USA Team Captain Jeff Bukantz is not a director, and thus fair game for camera whacking, unless such whackage also results in a Rule #1 violation.

Tomorrow will see the first finals action in Women’s Foil and Men’s Saber. We’ll see how the expanded video efforts pay off.