Leon Paul and the Japanese Fencing Association have partnered up for a second time. This is an exciting time for us to be involved with Japanese fencing. The first time we worked together was around the 2012 Olympics, I had been inspired by a speech by Yuki Ota that he gave in London about what he had need to succeed in sport.

Yuki had talked about how 10,000 hours of practice was not enough, and it was only when he had the full package of support, training, coaching and a little luck that he was able to succeed on the very highest stage, the Olympics. Here are my brief notes I made during the speech all those years ago:

After that, I was determined to work with Japan and the team that Yuki had talked about. The first time we sponsored the team we provided kit for some of the top fencers and designed some special, secret equipment to try and improve athlete’s performance.

Fast forward 7 years and we are on the cusp of the next Olympic games, which will be held in Tokyo, and I cannot wait. After I visited Tokyo in 2018, to visit clubs, coaches and meet with Yuki and the Japanese Fencing Federation, we decided that we should change focus for the next partnership. We have moved our focus from the high level athletes and decided that we should look to create a lasting legacy from the Games. We are still supplying some kit for the team and looking at ways to give Japanese fencers the best chance of success. For example, when I visited the Japanese fencing training centre I noticed that some of the scoring kit they were using look quite old, when I tested them I found that the timings for some of the weapons was out of specification. That meant the athletes were training the wrong speeds and distance on a daily basis. We quickly helped lend the Federation new scoring systems that had the correct timings, that will be used at the Tokyo Olympics. I believe that Leon Paul are the only fencing company that have designed and made a machine that can test all the timings in fencing scoring systems. We can tell if you are fencing to the latest rules.

The new focus for this sponsorship is;

• To create new fencers and coaches after the 2018 games has finished. We want to create more competitions for youth fencing, also making their events cheaper to run and easier to set up. This is based on the very successful Leon Paul Junior Series we run in the UK but modified for the cultural and environmental differences of Japan. For example, the we will incorporate our ‘Fencing Passport’ that kids use to track their competition results:

• To provide a simple to use, but fantastic looking finals set up so that the federation can visit schools and public display areas to showcase the very best of the sport.

• To cultivate a wireless revolution, by helping clubs and coaches get competition level wireless fencing sets so that they can fence anywhere, quickly and easily.

• To translate the fantastic children’s fencing book; About Fencing

I am hugely excited to see the fencing in Tokyo 2020, but I am equally excited to see a fencing legacy can be left so that even more people can learn and enjoy the sport, and perhaps make the next generation of legends like Yuki Ota’s for Japan.