Some CMI participants arrived already preparing for the Olympics yet others had never set foot in a fencing club – such as the two Jamaicans, a boxer and a cricket player, who joined the coaching session in March 2015 with the task of learning as much about fencing and coaching as they could from the FIE CMI coaching advancement programme in New York before returning home to kick-start Jamaican fencing. They founded two clubs and began recruiting new fencers in earnest.

Two of these newly minted Jamaican fencers attended our March and April 2016 FIE CMI Pan- American training camp, along with other Pan- American athletes who had qualified for the Rio Games. Having only fenced for a few months, the Jamaican fencers put in extra hours on top of an already impressive training schedule to develop themselves as both athletes and ambassadors for the sport.

One of the Jamaican fencers was so taken with the programme that she wrote afterwards: “The view of people working hard, day and night, in New York City drove me to be on that grind as well. I developed a love for the Fencers Club and the FIE CMI programme and hope some day that I can give back.”