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Kiwi scientists and champion up a

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fencer Doctor Matt Baker is representing

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New Zealand of the upcoming Olympic

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qualifier for fencing tournament in Dubai.

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Sydney based Baker is the Science

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Yeah research fell over the School

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of Biotechnology and Bio Molecular Sciences

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at the University of New South

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Wales where he studies the molecular

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motor. That. Makes bacteria swim. Matt

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as the sole New Zealand gladiator

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in the men's Epee aged forty

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one, father of two young children,

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his own guard against some up

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and coming young stars all hungry

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for success at the Asia Oceania

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Zonal qualifier for the Paris Olympics

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asked him, oh, when he's poised

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to compete to what is poised

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to compete in and what stage

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this is ahead of the Olympics.

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Services called the Zonal Olympic Qualifier and

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this for zones. And the fastest way

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to explain this would be because this

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three types of fencing weapon, foil, ebay

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and sober and both men and women.

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That means there's there's about thirty spots

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for each event fresh and most of

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them have already been allocated so the

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top eight teams roughly speaking have already

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qualified. Then there's another six people that

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get selected by world ranking so that's

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thirty. And then this the last remaining

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four slots. one for everyone in Asia

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and Oceania, one favor on in the

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Americas, one for a run in Africa

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and one for ever on and year.

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So I'm going to the are not

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qualify for Asia and Oceania and the

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winner of that com and each country

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who hasn't qualify get the send. Only

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one person thought per event as like

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a sort of gladiator tournament and if

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you win that tournament then you you

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earn the right to compete in Paris

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twenty twenty fourth, No pressure. Then. Yeah.

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It's quite exciting. I mean it is fresher,

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but it's a really nice to know because

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it's kind of like a list the best

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of the rest. And what that means is

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you have a real time first set of

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nations across Asia so you know the classic

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opposition will be like Kurdistan as Pakistan but

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we also have Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Vietnam,

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People might be surprised to hear

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that there are three different types of

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weapons. You were talking about the foil, the sabre and

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your one which is the epee. Broadly

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speaking, what is the difference between them? So

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epee is kind of the easiest to understand in that it's

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just whoever hits first and you can hit anywhere on the

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body. So you can hit them on the head or the

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foot or the hand and as a

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result it's a lot more patient because it's just

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whoever hits first, it's a little bit harder to

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just sort of charge at someone because you can

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disrupt your opponent's attack by sort of hitting them

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on the way in. The other

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two events, foil and sabre, they have

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what's called the right of way and it's a bit

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hard to understand that but ultimately if you start an

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attack then you get the chance to finish that before

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the other person has a go. And

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the final remaining thing which is kind of

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easier to explain is sabre is a bit more like

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a pirate sword. It looks like a pirate sword, like

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a Lego pirate sword and you can actually hit them

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with the side of the blade so you get to

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chop in a more sort of swashbuckling theater style way.

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Whereas foil and epee, my event, you have to touch them

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with the point of the sword, more like a sort of

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old school jewel if you were to think of it that

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way. How did you

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get into fencing in the first place? I

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think all kids kind of like playing with swords and I don't

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mean that in a crazy way, I just mean that you know

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most you'll see kids playing in a park like

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this and they sort of romanticise like the pirate

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Lego example I gave but most people never realize

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there's a sport that ultimately is about that and

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fencing is kind of quite far removed from sword

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fighting. It's highly sort of honed in a sporting

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sense now, you know, you're not actually trying to

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skewer someone on your sword, you're actually trying to hit them

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as likely as possible so that you get the point. But

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yeah, like I like doing that. The real answer

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is my brother very briefly did it

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at a Tago University just as like undergrad.

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He's about seven years older than me and

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I was kind of hanging around him until I could get a

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start. At that time I lived in Dunedin and

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I tried to go along as an eight-year-old and it was a

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bit weird, there weren't many eight-year-olds trying to do it. They didn't

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have any kids equipment and stuff. My family

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and I moved to Australia when I was about 11 and

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I think they knew I wanted to fence so that

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my fence helped me fence and so... a long

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time until I had a kids club and that was a real moment

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for me when I was fencing with other kids. It becomes really normal

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and fun and part of my life, right, I was training with other

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kids and having fun doing it. But

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also, you were clearly very good at

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it. If you're at the point where you may

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be qualifying for the Olympics... I

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suppose it is important to enjoy it as a

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kid. That's probably the biggest metric of success later

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on, but it's worth saying, yes, one of the

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great things about fencing is you can pay

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success kind of early in a way. Maybe there's a

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smaller pool of people doing fencing. So in a smaller

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country or at the local level, you experience that and

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you're like, oh, maybe this is something I'm good at.

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I think if you were to see me in person,

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I've got kind of really long arms, like my arm

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stand is six foot ten and my height is six

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foot three. So my arms are longer than my height.

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And a lot of fences probably have the same thing. So

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that doesn't mean you can't fence if you have like T-Rex

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tiny arms. But now that I look at it from the

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higher end, let's say maybe that's

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over the top, but now that I look at it,

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if I look around the competitors at my level, they are

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kind of my height and they maybe do kind of

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have long arms. So you say if

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you were good at fencing, you might not

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be good at sword fighting. Why not? Because

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superficially, I guess to the untrained eye, they

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look like they're similar-ish.

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That's fair. I mean, I suppose the question is, would

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I be better in a sword fight than someone who

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never fenced at all? Maybe. Maybe I'll grant you that.

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But it's more that I suppose in sword

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fighting and the people who really care about sort

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of historical reenactments, generally tend to poo-poo

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fencing because it's not like a massive broadsword and you're

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not wearing armour and all this stuff. But more what

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I'm getting at is that it's a pretty old sport,

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right? It's one of the first sports in the modern

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Olympics from 1896 onwards. And so as

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a result, once you

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become a serious competitive Olympic sport, then

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you get home to get people

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studying video, studying biomechanics, training

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the actions and professionalizing that for the

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sake of the sport. And that's kind

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of quite far removed away from

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where it maybe started, which was like trying to

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run someone through in a duel for your

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honour or however it is the case. So

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it's not quite such as the swashbuckling as

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people might. thinking. Well you're saying

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that you don't wear armor but you do wear I suppose it's

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a type of body armor

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because you're

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wearing Kevlar which is what that's

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what flag jackets are made of. That's what you wear if you're

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in a war zone. That's correct

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and you know what it's interesting you say that because I have

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trained a lot in the Ukraine and there was a movement

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to sort of get

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old fencing gear and chop it up

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to put inside helmets to improve their

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bullet proofness because it's great way of

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dissipating force but yes that's a

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by the by. Yes it is Kevlar and I

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feel bad yes it's very safe and we do

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wear these jackets but I suppose you wouldn't go

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into like a medieval battle wearing this. Our ones

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are designed to basically stop you in

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the event of a blade fracture getting

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run through but the actual swords are not sharp they have

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these little tiny buttons on. I still

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get some bruises now and then but by and

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large we're not trying to hit each other really

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hard because if I was able to hit you

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really hard then I should have hit you less

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hard earlier if you get what I mean rather

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than like overdo it and if I do hit

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you too hard I'm also probably off balance for

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all these other things that will make it harder

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for me to like keep going in

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the action. The other notion people

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have about fencing is it's like it's called

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off physical chess and fencing has used that

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sort of mystique as a really intellectual sport

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but the reality is is I think in

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the last especially the last 20 years and

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even more during Covid because everyone couldn't fence

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so they did more strength and conditioning it

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has become more about that you know ballistic

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speed plyometrics and your athleticism. You don't necessarily

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need to have the cleverest action if you

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do a few things very fast or

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very strong then yeah you can be a champion absolutely.

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How about the sort of I

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suppose the waiting between strength and balance

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because you must have

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to have very

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good coordination around balance

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to be able to be good at what you do. Balance

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is very important I don't think it's too

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dissimilar in footwork patterns from maybe netball or

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badminton in those types of things like it

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but one big difference is bit

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more one-dimensional. We play on a piece which is 14

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meters long but it's only about two meters wide.

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So you know it's kind

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of linear in that sense. Balance

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is absolutely very important and

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I don't mean strength in the sense of able to

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bench press a lot. I can tell you right now

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I definitely cannot bench press very much at all. But

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you know it's more about strength specific so we might

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have actually quite strong hands, maybe surprisingly strong fingers because

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you're holding the weapon and there's a lot of sort

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of fine mode of control in your

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fingers. I think this is right something like

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a millimeter at your fingers translates to like

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10 centimeters movement in the tip and that's

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what's doing a lot of the action. So that's technical

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side of it in your hands is probably one of

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the hardest elements. I'm just looking at my

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hands and trying to get them to move by a

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millimeter on my fingertips and I can see what you

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mean. That would change the angle quite dramatically of anything

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you were holding in your hand that was long and

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pointy. Yeah exactly. Another

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line that people love to say is that the

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tip of a fencing foil is like faster than

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a bullet. Now I'm not sure exactly where that

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factoid came from but it certainly moves very very

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fast and you can look at that now in

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slow motion and replays and if people are watching

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the Olympics or watching high level fencing because

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of the combination of the athlete moving fast but actually

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exactly what I just said you can move your hands

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like a couple of millimeters quite quickly for your athletes

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and so then that means that the other end of

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that sword moves very very fast and of course you're

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trying to see where your opponent's tip is maybe

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you're trying to block their blade in what we call a parry

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at the same time as you're then trying to move your tip

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towards the target. So the sport happens very

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fast and reaction time as well as your

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ability to execute an action is very important

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as well. What sort of

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training do you have to do aside

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from obviously actually fencing and

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especially if you get older what sort of things are

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you noticing you're having to do more of? You

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know I am definitely on the older end

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of the town and I'm really inspired by

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a Czech athlete Yigí Boran who's 42 and

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he qualified outright as the top 16 in

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the world. There are a couple of us

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who are in the 40 club or as I like to call

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it double junior because junior is 20 under

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20 so I'm a double junior but it's

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changed for sure. I think as a 20-year-old,

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you really need to be doing all that technical

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skill work lessons. At

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my age, possibly less of

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learning the new technical things and more of like

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reminding myself I have that skill set and

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then doing actually much more strength and conditioning to

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just stay alive, you know, sort of prehabs to

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prevent injury and to stay fit enough to compete

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against people that are like, yeah, up to

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20 years younger than me. So that would be

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a lot of assault bike

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work, shuttle runs, that's on

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the cardio end and then strength and agility. So

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that is like plyometrics, jumping,

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squatting, probably as much

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injury prevention and post

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competition sort of rehab and management at my

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age as like, I'm going

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to go and like push myself super hard and lift more

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weight or whatever. So

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I suppose you are getting to the tail

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end of your career. So I guess this is

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your last shot at the Olympics? Yes,

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yes. People laugh at me when I say this because they

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think, somebody was saying that for 10 years, Matt, but it

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most certainly is now. Like I

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put my family through a lot the last

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three months. I mean, the schedule is really

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relentless in this qualification period, almost every two

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weeks of traveling to the comp. And

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even those that are paid to do it, like the

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professional teams in my zone, like Kazakhstan, Japan, Hong Kong,

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they're away from home for six weeks at a time.

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So yes, I think in particular, I've really

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enjoyed being able to do this, the qualification

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run, and I really enjoy fencing, but I

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am looking towards the next stage, which could

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be involved in governance. I'm involved in the

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Oceanic Fencing Federation and I like that concept

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of bringing fencing to new countries in Oceania

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and also maybe in the coaching context. But

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it's a hard thing to think about. I don't want to be

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planning my retirement while I'm still in the game, but yes, I

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am aware that it is probably the time for a transition. And

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that is Dr. Matt Baker. He is going

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to be representing New Zealand at

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this Olympic qualifier. The Last Chance,

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there's a link on our website to watch

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that from four o'clock this afternoon.