Paralympic gold-medallists hail new SwordSeat which makes wheelchair fencing accessible
Wheelchair fencing Paralympic gold-medallists Dimitri Coutya and Piers Gilliver have described an innovative wooden-frame training chair, designed by engineers at the University of Bath in collaboration with British Fencing, as a game-changer for their sport.
The SwordSeat – a simple six-piece slot-together design which can be built using minimal tools for around £150 worth of plywood – aims to make wheelchair fencing affordable and accessible to many more clubs and participants.
It received its official launch on Wednesday this week during an event hosted by British Fencing at the Team Bath Sports Training Village, home to the Wheelchair Fencing National Training Centre.
Two-time Paris 2024 champion Coutya and Tokyo 2020 gold-medallist Gilliver – who both train at the venue – were among the guests treated to a demonstration of the SwordSeat in action.
Gilliver, recalling the challenges he faced with equipment and accessibility when he first started wheelchair fencing, said: “The SwordSeat is a fantastic innovation.
“Wheelchair fencing frames are quite hard to source and the whole set-up can cost between £8,000 and £15,000. Something like this, which can be made with a simple piece of plywood and produced so cheaply, means more clubs can be welcoming to wheelchair fencers.”
Coutya added: “The SwordSeat is a fantastic way to remove some of the barriers to the sport. Equipment becomes much less of a problem and everyone now has the option to try wheelchair fencing.”
Before the demonstration, guests learnt more about the work that had gone into the SwordSeat’s design and production from British Fencing Inclusion Officer (Disability) Rick Rodgers, who initiated the project, and Dr Ed Elias, a Senior Lecturer in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering who created the SwordSeat with his Integrated Design Engineering student, Conor Roberts.
“We wanted to try and get the set-up costs down to as low as we could,” said Dr Elias. “We’ve made an Ikea-style slot-together piece of furniture which can be built with home DIY tools. We’re really excited that it is going to open up wheelchair fencing to many more people.”
Only a handful of the UK’s 400+ fencing clubs currently have wheelchair fencing rigs, which cost more than £5,000 and need to have wheelchairs attached, totalling over £15,000. They are also bulky and require plenty of storage space.
By contrast, the SwordSeat’s six parts can be cut from a single piece of 25mm plywood board and the only tools required are a jigsaw (or handsaw) and 6mm drill. Once cut, the parts can be assembled in around one minute and strapped together with ratchet straps for vital rigidity, or taken apart and flat-packed for easy transport.
The seat also incorporates an alignment board that can be configured to accommodate any combination of right- or left-handed competitors. The DIY nature of the design means that changing some elements is possible, such as increasing the height of seat backs to help users with spinal injuries who may need additional support, and damaged parts can be easily replaced.
Expressions of interest in a SwordSeat can be made here.
Other guests at Wednesday’s event included British Fencing CEO Georgina Usher, who made the opening and closing remarks; representatives of ParalympicsGB and UK Sport; Peter John Huggins of IWAS Wheelchair Fencing; and Harry Cootes and Charmaine Hooper of World Abilitysport.
Among the University of Bath representatives were Ghazwa Alwani-Starr (Chief Operating Officer), Cassie Wilson (Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Student Experience) and Stephen Baddeley (Director of Sport).
The University of Bath has been the training base for Britain’s high-performance wheelchair fencers since 2015, during which time Coutya, Gilliver and Oliver Lam-Watson have brought home 20 medals between them – three of them gold – from three Paralympic Games. Athletes on the programme have also won a host of World, European and Commonwealth titles.
