Jo, when I saw the cast I recognized your friend and the current champ from a picture or two which you had posted in the recent past, but I could not recollected her name till she introduced herself. I had been wondering as to why Nicole adorns herself in some pink items of clothing or why her lanyard was in pink (
even in those past photos) which I had just assumed was just some "girlie" flavor!!! It was very great to hear that she's a breast cancer survivor and a true competitor in the game of Life. Kudos top your friend, although YOU are still our emotional Champ and the future Bladesport ladies champ
Now onto the episode: WTF with the butcher and that butcher's knife?!!!
... Also, flimsy swords are STUPID, extremely stupid for that kinda course. Now, where's Ivan with his CPK-Sword??? I wanna see a REAL sword made by Nathan Carothers
P.S. the runner up kid with the lime green Tee did much better than I had anticipated merely being very judgy by his initial physical appearances. Those bigger parangs do have some advantages for such a course, IMO.
Yep, hearing Nicole's back story was great. Testament to perseverance and grit.
As for the choices of some of the competitors, it's nice that some folks are kind enough to volunteer to be the comic relief in each episode.
Invited to a blade competition where you'll be cutting and chopping all kinds of things, so you bring your meat prep knife? He definitely got further than I expected with that little knife though.
As for the sword choices thus far... I get that they want to include some martial artists (or martial arts enthusiasts anyway), but these guys aren't terribly smart in their sword picks for... once again,... a competition that involves
chopping all manner of objects.
I've trained in various martial arts since childhood, including Japanese sword arts (as well as Chinese and Filipino), and I would NEVER bring a katana to a chopping competition, unless they told me the ONLY objects I'd be chopping were meat and/or tatami.
Then again, I wouldn't have brought ANY blade I hadn't at the very least, tested by seeing how many times it could chop through a 2x4, without any durability or edge holding issues. I wouldn't bring it, if it couldn't even handle that well at least 10x, but that's me.
If I were to ever consider bringing some kind of commercially available sword to something like this, Cold Steel's Chinese War Sword might be near the top of the list (unless I could beg or borrow a Super Assassin waki
).
Mr. "I've probably got more experience with edged weapons than anyone here" with the bowie, is another example of a 'martial arts enthusiast'. When they did the blade preview and mentioned how thick the blade was behind the edge AND that it wasn't very sharp, that was this episode's rolleyes for me. Claim to be an edged weapon expert and bring a blade that's not even very sharp?
The runner up in the lime green T-shirt that you mentioned is a good example of how big a difference, the tool can make. No experience in chopping competitions, not the best physical condition, but the falcata did pretty well on most things with its length and chopping power. I did wonder at yet another guy bringing an untested tool ("I just finished this a couple of days ago"), but it held up pretty well.
The barong design didn't do too badly either, although the edge holding wasn't as good as some of the other tools.
Whoever made Jason's kukri did a good job though. It not only held up well, it also held its edge better than anything else in that episode, and his ability to use it was quite obvious.
I'm not sure how far the folks with their competition choppers can get on this competition. It takes quite a bit of skill and physical ability to compensate for the disadvantages of that 10" blade length.
