Wizolympics 2016: Fencing

It’s finally time to hear about the Wizolympic competition that you’ve all been waiting for, Fencing! This is Aisley Selwyn reporting from the 502nd Wizolympics in Rio de Janeiro. Fencing is always a popular sport because there is so much action that takes place in the arena. This year, the competition took place in the Caipora Arena, and it lasted the whole day. This year’s competition was tough. The day started with competitors from 25 different countries and ended with one Galleon medalist.

The Fencing competition started when the sun came up, and as expected, there was one big scandal to begin the competition. There were originally 24 countries registered for Fencing, but Canada’s registration forms seem to have been chewed on by a moose, so they ended up not actually being registered for the event. Nathan Roy, the competitor from Canada, arrived at the arena this morning to find out that he was not registered for the event. Thankfully, there were some Wizolympic Committee members present who were willing to pull some strings and allow Roy to compete.

Once that whole problem was sorted out, the competition began. Unfortunately, Nathan Roy was one of the first few competitors to be eliminated. He attempted to build his fence out of ice blocks. While that is a fantastic idea, there were some problems with his cooling charms, and the ice blocks kept melting. The first round of eliminations is when the competitors who are unable to build anything are taken out of the competition. They’re always taken out first because Fencing can get pretty dangerous after that first stage. The countries eliminated in the first round include Bhutan, Canada, Iraq, Peru, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.

Once the eliminated competitors were placed in the holding cage on the side of the arena, the competition began again. The second round showed a lot of promise and some very interesting fences. The competitor from Belgium, Marie Maes, decided to make her fence out of waffles, frites, and beer. This seems to be building up well, and it is distracting the other competitors. They were not given a break for lunch, so there are a lot of hungry people out there. Stacy Smith from Team USA decided that she, too, would use a food for her fence. Let’s see how well red, white, and blue Jell-O will hold up in the next stage of the competition.

During the second stage, the judges rate each fence on how interested they are in it. The competitors with the eight lowest scores are eliminated. Brazil ended up being the first country eliminated in this round due to lack of interest in the metal fence that was being built. Henrik Horvat from Croatia was also eliminated. The judges were not impressed with his brick-laying work and said that he had to go. The competitors from Australia, Greece, Iraq, Malta, Mongolia, and Russia were forced out of the arena and into the holding cage due to a general lack of interest in their fences. Tough luck, guys!

The third round is where the fun begins. Once their foundations are set, competitors are free to move outside of their assigned areas. They can either stay in their own space, or they can take over another competitor’s space. It looks like Maes decided to not share her waffles with anyone because she stayed in her area. Smith expanded her Jell-O, and it began to envelop France’s Champagne bottle fence. The Jell-O swallowed up all of the Champagne bottles, and the pressure caused the bottles to pop open. This made to Jell-O begin to grow larger until it took up the entire area for America, France, and Belgium. The judges ruled that Belgium and France were now out of the competition due to their fences being eaten by the Jell-O.

Cormac McLaggen from the United Kingdom decided to keep his dry stack stone wall inside of his assigned area. He also made the interesting decision to build it by hand. The rocks were conjured, but all of the building was done by McLaggen. The Chinese competitor, Hui Chang, decided to take over McLaggen’s space. Chang decided to build a replica of the Great Wall of China around McLaggen’s fence. McLaggen tried to hold his space, but the judges eventually ruled that he had lost control and removed him from the competition. Chang was also eliminated after the judges decided that his replica of the Great Wall was definitely a wall and not a fence. Building a wall is cause for immediate expulsion from the competition.

The competitor from New Zealand decided to take her fence back to New Zealand after the sheep that the fence was made up of began to rebel. She disappeared during the competition and was immediately eliminated. The cause of the sheep’s rebellion was the competitor from Romania. She ended up being a vampire who really likes sheep. She followed them to New Zealand after deciding to start her own sheep farm. The Jell-O from America kept expanding and ended up swallowing the pasta that Italy’s fence was made out of. Strands of spaghetti began to shoot out of the Jell-O like rockets and ended up knocking down Egypt’s pyramid fence. Egypt’s fence crumbled into the hot spring waterfall fence that the competitor from Iceland had made. This completely stopped up the hot springs and destroyed the fence.

Now it’s time to find out what happened in the final round to determine who got the Gallion, Sickle, and Knut. There were three competitors remaining: Stacy Smith from America, Ivan Peterson from Denmark, and Sofia Weber from Germany. Ivan Peterson asked me to remind everyone that he is actually from Greenland, which is a Danish territory.

Germany was quickly removed from the competition when Peterson’s sand fence began to take over the moat that surrounded Weber’s fence. The Jell-O began to absorb the sand, but the sand just kept coming. Peterson had found a great source of sand and was able to flood the arena with it. After a few minutes, the Jell-O had absorbed so much sand that it was no longer capable of moving, and it started to fall apart as the sand sucked up the liquid in the Jell-O. After a quick discussion, the judges proclaimed that Ivan Peterson from Denmark/Greenland had won the Galleon medal for Fencing.