Which sport will you watch at the Olympics?

Now that Olympic tickets have been on sale since Tuesday 15th March, you’ve had the time to think about which tickets you might like to buy. Here is my guide to buying (fencing) tickets.

Biased, me? Never.

Ticket prices for the London 2012 Olympic Games range from £20.12 to £2,012 – see what they’ve done there? There are 8.8 million tickets up for grabs and 2.5 million of those tickets are priced at £20 or less.

In athletics, the men and women’s 100m final will cost you a hefty £725 per ticket and in diving the 10m final for men and women will cost a surprising £450, whereas the fencing finals will cost just £95. I say ‘just’, but in comparison to many other Olympic sports, fencing is one of the sports which I believe to be good value for money.

See where I am going here? I know I am blatantly biased towards fencing, but I do believe that the Olympics is a great opportunity for you to see sports that you might never get the chance to see outside of the Olympic Games. I will always be a great supporter of minority sports, coming from one myself, and this is our one day to shine.

I believe fencing can be spectator-friendly. It will need knowledgeable commentators and enthusiasts to sell the sport during the Olympic Games. But ultimately it will be about enjoying the atmosphere, the tension, the passion and the sheer determination of our Olympic fencers battling it out to be the best.

I do not believe you need to be a fencing expert to enjoy the sport. There are many sports that I watch where I have little understanding of what is going on but I can still appreciate them. Fencing is fast, challenging, gripping and a combat sport. Many people can relate to that.

As an athlete striving to make the Games, I wouldn’t want to tempt fate and buys tickets a whole year in advance. I am glad the London 2012 Olympics organising committee has reserved a pool of 70,000 tickets for qualified athletes.

Athletes will be allowed to buy one to two tickets each from this pool. I believe one to two tickets is an absolute minimum. If I did qualify, I would buy these tickets for my parents who have supported me both emotionally and financially since I started fencing at the age of ten.

I am glad that a ticketing strategy has been introduced to help ensure athletes get the chance to purchase at least one ticket – even if I’d like to push for more. It may sound trite but without the athletes there would be no Olympic Games in the first place.

Ticket allocation should be transparent and fair. Hopefully this will be the case at London 2012. Lord Coe believes that it will be “the daddy of all ticket strategies.” I hope so too because unless enough fair priced tickets are allocated to sports enthusiasts, they will not be seen as the Games of the people but the Games of money and big corporations at a time when the city is under the spotlight.

Surely the Games should be more about Great Britain and her athletes and less about corporate entities who may buy up large quantities of tickets, and not use them. It would be a travesty to see empty seats. Let there be no repeat of the sea of empty seats that were visible at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Crowd support can take you to the next level and can make the difference between success and failure. Its power should not be under-estimated.

So get buying and support our Great Britain athletes in London 2012. And if in doubt, fencing is always a good one to go for. Honest.

2011 in full swing

I seem to have had another little drought in my personal blog writing. Sorry about that. Time flies and already so much has happened since the last time I blogged. I have been a busy bee and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Has anyone been following my new Daily Telegraph blog? Here is my latest one: http://bit.ly/gbO5M5 I am very excited to be blogging for the Daily Telegraph. I have really enjoyed it to date and I hope to blog much more regularly in the lead up to London 2012. These are exciting times and I hope that I can capture the moment as much as possible in my writing.

Without wanting to repeat myself, in January I did some pre-season training at Poland’s brand new national training centre for foil in Gdansk. The facilities are incredible and the training was great. Every day I saw very young children taking group fencing classes at the national training centre. They have access to world-class facilities from such an early age and have a system set in place that will turn, some of them, into world-class athletes.

Indeed, I have just come back from yet another training camp in Gdansk last week and while searching for a tap to fill up my water bottle, I discovered an entire separate building devoted to classrooms, nurseries and educating these young children while allowing them to train and to fence.

This genuinely took me by surprise. Of course I have been to sporting institutions where they mix both academia and high-level sport together but these have always been big multi-sporting institutions. The fencing centre in Gdansk is entirely devoted to fencing and even more specifically, to foil. I think it is great.

Unfortunately for me, last week’s training camp in Gdansk came to an abrupt end when I injured my foot while landing badly in a strength and conditioning exercise. As I said in my Daily Telegraph blog, injury is an athlete’s nightmare. You’d be surprised how tender and sensitive the tendons and ligaments are in your foot but I hope to be back to fighting form as soon as possible.

I’d like to thank all the Polish staff and athletes alike who were so helpful, supportive and generous in their dealings with me after my injury occurred. They were fantastic and made a difficult situation a whole lot easier. Thank-you.

I’d also like to thank Balance Physio who have recently started supporting me. They are a top sports injury and physio clinic based in Clapham, South London. I am sure that with their help, I will be back fighting sooner than later. I have absolute faith in the people who look after me and this little test will only make me come back stronger.

On a much happier and positive note, in February I visited St. Benedict’s School in Ealing where I gave two assemblies on ‘Going for Goals’ and took some fencing ‘master-classes.’ It was a privilege and inspiring to see such passion and enthusiasm in the children. I met some bright young fencing stars with so much potential. St. Benedict’s should be very proud of their fencing set-up. Schools are an important recruiting ground for fencing and there seems to be a lot of young fencing enthusiasts at St. Benedict’s. It is wonderful to see. Indeed it was at school where my passion for fencing was ignited. I wish them all the very best of luck in their fencing pursuits, it was a pleasure meeting you all. Onwards and upwards!

Finally, the European tour comes to an end at the end of March and after a rest in April we move on to China and South Korea for the Asian leg of the circuit. I am looking forward to sharing with you, the ups and downs of the next stage of what is Olympic qualifying year.