Hi Guys,
Here’s a quick review of the biggest HEMA tournament on the other side of the pond: Longpoint 2015!
First of all – I know it’s been a good few weeks already since the event but I was delaying it because I thought there might be some better quality videos available later on (what we got here is just a roughly edited recording of the live stream) … but I was wrong so we have to deal with what we got :)
So this year was quite interesting for many reasons. It was the first year when the gold medal wasn’t won by an european fighter (Axel Pettersson was last year’s Longpoint winner) but by a US fencer: Dustin Reagan which means the skill gap between US and Europe is finally closing in (they have won over Axel Pettersson, Ties Kool, Kristian Ruokonen etc). This may also means that US fighters will now finally start coming to Europe to participate in our tournaments which will make HEMA scene much more international than before.
Another thing was moving away from the traditional scoring system towards more points weighted ruleset that it is supposed to prefer clear technical fighting (and we’ve seen this also in this year’s Fight Camp too) – where a clean hit is worth 3-5 times more than the afterblow and the double is worth null. I personally think that makes fights a bit cleaner and less messy than what we used to see over the last few years which is a great thing and something to implement in our own internal tournaments from next year maybe?
Anyways, here’s the youtube video with Longpoint 2015 highlights below, use the time stamps below to go directly to longsword finals or just enjoy the whole video :)
2:26:45 Axel Pettersson (GHFS) vs Ben Floyd (KSD) – bronze medal fight
2:36:45 Dustin Reagan (RFC) vs Ben Strickling (TSG) – gold medal fight
And one more playlist with some more tournament highlights:
Enjoy!