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The 2007 Sports Ball, held recently at the Park Lane Hilton, was enormous fun with nearly 700 guests including many famous sporting heroes such as Ben Ainslie, Linford Christie, Sir Matthew Pinsent, James Cracknell, Karen Pickering, Bradley Wiggins, Kris Akabusi, Tessa Sanderson and Dame Tanni Grey Thompson.

The annual party celebrates Sports Aid’s fantastic work with emerging British sporting talent.

After dinner guests including Olympic Gold Medal winning rowers “had a go” at fencing with members of the British squad on an impressive “Finals” set-up provided by Leon Paul.

British Fencing and Leon Paul provided foam sabres to liven up the evening, and far into the night guests in evening dress could be seen fencing each other with the brightly coloured foam swords in Park Lane and even in the tube on the way home.

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I have just been sent a copy of James Fielding's new book "Made in Britain" and was please to see that Leon Paul made it into the book. The book sets out to find 75 of the best quintessential British companies.

The book starts: Marmite, black cabs and cups of tea: something’s are just plain British. But with so many factories moving aboard, are they actually still made in Britain? Want to support traditional skills and high-tech engineering on these shores? Want to learn about quality products, built to last, and the family-run businesses that make them? Discover how you can buy British and be proud.

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AT THE

The second UK School Games, held at world-class venues in Coventry over the August Bank Holiday weekend, were hailed as a huge success. Organised by the Youth Sport Trust, the event provides a showcase multi-sport environment for top-level competition for young people. There were both opening and closing ceremonies and an athletes’ village and the world-class set-up was an inspiration for young athletes dreaming of success at London 2012.

Athletics legend Daley Thompson declared the Games open at a spectacular ceremony on Thursday evening. Over 1300 talented young athletes competed in 8 sports, - athletics, badminton, fencing, gymnastics, judo, swimming, table tennis and volleyball. Dame Kelly Holmes and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson toured the venues and held a questions and answers session for competitors at the Athletes Village. The Minister of Sport, the Olympics Minister and also UK Sport and the Youth Sport Trust attended the exciting team fencing events on the Sunday.

Fencing Pictures

 Fencing was a firm favourite with spectators, volunteers and competitors at the very first UK School Games at Glasgow last year. The 4 home countries (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) battled it out again this year at the splendid Ricoh Arena, home to Coventry City Football Club. Ex Olympian fencer James Williams again provided a lively and informative commentary on the action while encouraging and inspiring the young fencers to raise their game to new levels. His contribution along with all the organisers and volunteers was outstanding.

 On Saturday experience of the UK School Games counted, with 5 of the 6 gold medals going to those who competed last year at Glasgow. Leon Paul sponsored fencers Marcus Mepstead and Corinna Lawrence took gold at mens’ foil and womens’ epee respectively. James Honeybone won an exciting and closely fought final at mens’ sabre and Sophie Williams of Bath took gold for the second time at women’s sabre. Elizabeth Ng improved on her last year’s medal to win gold at womens’ foil. Jonathan May was the only fencer new to the UK School Games this year to win gold, defeating last year’s mens’ epee champion Ben White.On Sunday in the team competitions England won 5 of the 6 gold medals with Wales putting on a spectacular performance to take gold at mens’ foil. For full results see:

Leon Paul provided all the fencing equipment for the event including a raised metallic finals piste, 8 other metallic pistes with scoring apparatus and Denver Towers and thirteen 42” colour plasma screens for scoring and results service. Also for the first time ever in UK fencing we oversaw the creation and running of a live, on-line complete results service.

 Venue pictures

Below are some video footage taken at the event by part of the Leon Paul team. Please note that they are MP4 files which some video players will not read. You can download VLC player which is a free movie player which will play MP4's here: http://www.videolan.org/.

Congratulations to all the organisers, fencers, referees, armourers and volunteers for the success of this absolutely brilliant event.

Congratulations to LP sponsored fencer Laurence Halsted who fenced brilliantly to take bronze medal in Men’s foil.