Italian épée world champion Paolo Pizzo has spent the past week in Cape Town leading the most ambitious South African fencing training camp yet, as part of a long-term project aimed at producing internationally competitive South African fencers in time for a possible 2036 or 2040 Olympic Games hosting bid.
Pizzo, a double world champion and Olympic silver medallist, ran the camp at the Blues Fencing Club in Cape Town. The Blues Fencing Club Future Champions Academy (FCA), which is based in Milan and operated by Olympic fencing medallists and world fencing champions, agreed last year to a long-term collaboration with Blues. The working title of the project is Blues 2040, aligning with South African government objectives to host the 2036 or 2040 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
"It is an ambitious project," said Patrick Collings, Blues head coach and director of the Blues 2040 project. "But it is a realistic timeframe to produce fencers who will be consistently competitive at the highest level."
The Cape Town camp brought together 22 fencers from six clubs around the country. Although Blues hosted the project, the camp was deliberately club-neutral, with the federation's top-ranked épéeists invited regardless of affiliation. The camp included the top four-ranked senior women épéeists in the country, the number-one and number-two-ranked U17 women épéeists, three of the top four-ranked U20 women épéeists, five of the top six-ranked U20 men épéeists, and the top three men's U20 foilists.
"That is up to the Fencing Federation of South Africa and SASCOC," Collings noted of the project's relationship with national selection. "Our job is just to develop the best fencers possible for them to select."
Collings argued that while 2040 was "a pin in the future," consistent international results were expected years earlier. He pointed to performances by U20 and U17 épéeists at the recent 2026 Junior World Championships as evidence of progress, and emphasised that the structural longevity of fencing as a sport supported the long timeline. Six of the top 10 women épéeists in the world are currently in their 30s, he noted, and four of the top 20 are older than 35 — meaning many of the camp's current U17 and U20 fencers will still be in their athletic prime in 2036 and 2040.
Pizzo's involvement carries particular weight. The Italian survived a brain tumour as a teenager, went on to win world championships in 2011 and 2017, and was part of the Italian team that took silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics. "Paolo's story of battling the odds to succeed at the highest level is inspirational," Collings said. "He has the enormous talent, experience, and know-how to help our fencers achieve ambitious goals."
Pizzo himself expressed confidence in the South African group and committed publicly to the project's continuation. "I will be by your side in every moment," Pizzo told the fencers. "I gave my heart to you, and you give your heart to me."
The camp formed part of a wider international shift in fencing's development pipeline, with FCA Milan now working with multiple non-traditional fencing nations alongside its core Italian operations. South Africa's épée pool — the strongest of the country's three weapon categories — is the immediate focus, with the Yantolo twins Phumza and Phakama and senior fencer Lexiy Lancaster among the named participants. For Cape Town, the camp also signals an intent to embed fencing in the city's longer-term Olympic positioning, regardless of which year a South African hosting bid eventually targets.
