Last night, a friend called me to run some things past me about World Championships in Veteran Fencing, which are being held in Bahrain this coming week. We talked about how she is preparing to compete, what she’s thinking about, and the complex mental positioning you have to go through when you’re a USA team competitor in a combat sport full of personalities, and when you are now going to the culminating event of the year.

I haven’t been to Veteran Worlds since 2022, but I used to go all the time, and she has never been, which was why she called me. It’s not the first time someone has called me for advice for their first Worlds.

I’m so pleased for her that she competed well enough at two of the three national point events this year that she made the USA team in her age group, gender, and weapon. I was interested to hear that they are doing an over-40 individual event this year, and that they have divided the team event into two age groups, 40-59 and 60+. It sounds like the usual complex circus.

It isn’t helpful to tell people to calm down under those circumstances, so I didn’t. It isn’t helpful to say the event isn’t all that important in the bigger scheme of things, either. But to her, it is. So I didn’t.

I gave her some solid advice. I helped her understand when you have to advocate for yourself, and when the team comes first, and what the most important things are to focus on during competition. She knows it all already, but first-timers don’t know what to worry about, so they worry about everything.

I did take Veteran Worlds, and fencing, very seriously, once. I have four World gold medals (they are the only medals I have kept from a long career, and all four of the golds are framed on the wall beside me as I write), and some silvers and bronzes; I never finished lower than fifth in my event, not even the year I had crippling bursitis and was walking with a cane.

My last Veteran World Championships, though, I won gold in my event, burst into tears afterwards, and stopped fencing entirely after that.

It takes a lot of calculation, self-discipline, and continuous daily attention to decide you are going to win and then win, and I did it for years. The reason I burst into tears after winning gold in 2022 was that my husband had died two weeks earlier, and yet I had shown up anyway. I had qualified for the team, I had paid for my plane tickets and my coach’s, and I knew it was my gold medal to lose that year. When you spend all year positioning yourself to achieve something, the momentum is considerable.

The sport is a lot of fun, complex and exciting. I was good at it. The people were great, and when they weren’t (as they often weren’t) particularly nice, they were amusing. But I got off the phone last night and reflected that I am so glad I am not going to Bahrain. I will be cheering for my friend, so I suppose I should look up the schedule, so I know when to check the results. I do miss the sport.

I just don’t miss it enough to go back to it.