Please please donate to support your senior sabre teams
The sad fact is that both Men’s and Women’s teams are currently unfunded when it comes to entering teams in Senior World Cups (don’t be fooled by the Lottery badge in the photo – the kit is old as is the funding).
The team entry fees (Euro 400 per team) are not covered. Coaching costs are not covered. The required extra night’s stay in a hotel is not covered. No coach is provided by BF. No team manager is provided by BF. This leaves the senior team fencers effectively on their own apart from limited administrative support.
There is support from outside BF but this is very much on a volunteer basis. These young fencers (the average age of the top 6 active women sabreurs is 21.2 years and for the men that figure is 21.7) are effectively paying for the privilege to represent their country not as individuals but as a team on the world stage. They already pay as individuals but the team is not for individual glory.
Why don’t you know about this? In the past certain unnamed individuals have covered the costs of at least the team entry fees but they value their privacy. Training costs in years when there has been no funding have also been covered by private donations but these have unfortunately not been publicised so you probably have not been aware there is a problem.
At times there has been funding but at the moment there is nothing to cover training costs, travel costs or anything for your top fencers. Despite these constraints many of them are training hard and as much as possible but they are paying for it.
There is limited funding for championships from BF, drawing on funds from UK Sport – the Worlds, the Euros and the Student Games as we understand it. Whether the limited scope is imposed by UK Sport is currently unclear.
But what chance will the teams have if they have a low seeding due to not competing or due to not fielding the best team possible at the World Cups throughout the season?
Why didn’t we ask earlier? The simple answer is that we were seeking information from BF to make sure that we were not asking you for something that was already being funded by or via British Fencing.
So please help them and donate quite specifically to support the senior teams who are in fact very young.
So please help inspire future generations of fencers by supporting this generation and follow their progress via The Sabre Club.
At the moment the Women are ranked 21 (18 at end 2021) and the Men 17 (16 at end 2021)in the World. They have already missed out on a number of competitions and the men’s team has not yet competed – too many men pulled out of Tbilisi to field a team but the women put in a great effort coming 13th and beating Hong Kong, Romania and Kazakhstan along the way.
What are we asking for?
There are 5 World Cup Team events currently scheduled to the end of this season so the priority is to fund at least the entry fees to those events – 3 for women and 2 for men. That is 2000 Euros (about £1700). Next priority is to fund the extra night’s stay which is 20 (5 teams of 4) fencer hotel nights at an estimated £40/night coming to £800. Third priority is additional food and transport costs for the fencers – £20 for 20 fencer days making £400. Fourth priority is to reimburse the volunteer coaches. In total we would like to raise at least £2900. All the funds raised in this campaign will go to support the senior sabre teams.
Or please head to our donations page to donate via bank transfer and for a gift aid form
So far we have raised a limited amount of non specific funds for which we are very grateful and the bank balance is currently£322.78 as at 17 February 2022.
If you would like to discuss how to donate or how to apply for a donation or to correct/clear up any errors or misunderstandings please do contact us on trustees@thesabreclubcharity.uk
Can you gift aid it? Yes of course.
Will it all be swallowed up by admin costs? No it will not. The cost of running the website and other admin costs are covered by one of the trustees. Banking charges are inevitable but we try to keep them to a minimum while also making it easy to donate. If you pay by bank transfer that will, of course, minimise the fees but takes a bit more effort on your part.
The Sabre Club Charitable Foundation. Charity No: 1189637 