Sabre Fencing Commentary: Heathcock vs Kokubo 2025

Hey guys, so today I'm going to do a little commentary on this match from the 2025 Padua World Cup in Italy between Colin Heathcock of the USA and Kokubo Mao of Japan. Now if you follow the channel regularly then you will have seen a lot of Colin Heathcock. He's an absolute phenomenon at the age of 19. He's already won plenty of senior medals and it's kind of crazy that he still has a season left in juniors. Kokubo is not much older than Heathcock. They've fenced in the junior categories. In fact, Heathcock beat him in the final of the 2023 Junior World Championships. Kokubo is one of a number of young Japanese sabre fencers who are starting to make their way deeper and deeper into these competitions. It's only a matter of time until we start seeing them on the podiums in my opinion. So let's get into the match. So here we have an example of the prep and go game or stop and go game where basically both fencers do their preparation, do a little pause and then decide to go. And this is generally the kind of fencing that favours Colin Heathcock. When we see these kind of stop and go actions most of the time Heathcock is going to win. Here again we have another prep and go, another prep and go, a stop and go. Kokubo actually makes the right initial decision but Heathcock punishes him for holding too long. Here this can be a little subtle to see for some people but Heathcock basically just stops for a little too long. So Kokubo starts again. They both step in and stop. Heathcock waits just a little bit and Kokubo goes first by a really fine margin. Referees are splitting everything super super tight these days. It's not the best for the sport in my opinion but that's just how it is. On this one at 2-1 Kokubo basically it looks like he just guesses. At this level of fencing you really can't afford to make these kind of mistakes. It looks like he's pre-empting what's going to happen. He makes a deep prep and goes with his flange regardless of what position he's in. So it's an easy attack on prep for Heathcock. However as you will see later in the match he is dictating how the match is going. He is forcing Heathcock to do something so maybe he loses a point in the short term but in the long term it might not be so obvious. So this is an impressive touch for sure. I'm not sure how planned it is. It could just be instinct. Heathcock goes very deep. When you go that deep it can be really hard to to get a parry but Heathcock just has insane reactions so it could just be pure reactions. I don't really know. This is another stop and go situation. Again Heathcock comes out on top. On this one we really see why Heathcock is so good at these situations. It's because of his efficiency of movement. Look how he finishes his prep so cleanly. So cleanly compared to Kokubo. Kokubo here he takes an extra little half step which means he's behind just by a margin. Again this is another prep and go and here we see an example of what I call Colin Heathcock's stutter prep. We see a lot of stutter preparations these days and the main ones are from Colin Heathcock and Seb Patrice as well. There's a similar version and they're really effective in in these situations. If we look first at Kokubo when Kokubo stops he does his preparation and then stops. You see he pushes from his front leg and goes back just a little bit. There's just a little bounce back okay which means when he goes forward he's going to be a little slower. Compared to Heathcock he decelerates a bit more gradually okay so it's like um like a car like abs when abs kicks in the car and it just brakes and let go brake and let go and it just allows him to stop a bit more dead which means when he goes forwards he goes forwards just a little bit sooner. Although in this case it actually looks fairly marginal to me but the referee sees it as Colin Heathcock's attack. Again we see another advantage of the stutter step where this time Heathcock starts his preparation begins to decelerate or as if he's going to decelerate but he sees Kokubo is stepping back so he's able to really smoothly transfer this into a really clean attack. But there's no such thing as a magic prep you can't just do your prep and expect to win. We see here Kokubo isn't waiting he's not doing his prep and waiting he's doing his prep and making a really sharper decision which is putting a bit more pressure on Heathcock taking away some of the time he had which you will see will have a big impact on how his match plays out later on. Once again Kokubo is making a much quicker much more decisive action after his first step he's avoiding getting caught in his stop and go game with Heathcock you know you can't win the stop and go game against Heathcock. And now we see as a consequence of the last two points we see Heathcock is drawn into guessing right he's not waiting so much he's not reacting as he should be he rushes in with an action and Kokubo punishes him by making him miss. And here we're back to the stop and go and actually unusually Heathcock should normally win this one but he takes a step back before he goes right they both step in they both stop in fact Heathcock's preparation is a little cleaner than Kokubo if he goes here right instead of stepping back if he just goes then that's Heathcock's point but Heathcock takes a step back so that gives Kokubo the chance to take priority okay it doesn't give Kokubo priority but it gives him the chance to take priority that's an important distinction stepping back does not give someone priority it gives them the chance to take it and in this case Kokubo does take it. But here we go back to the stop and go game and we can see Heathcock is a lot more efficient in his action he doesn't step back he's a lot cleaner so he wins so this is still a situation that Kokubo wants to avoid to be honest. This is a bit of a gamble from Kokubo to be honest these deep parries are kind of risky if you pick the wrong parry you're pretty much dead but sometimes it's worth gambling because it means you even if you lose a point you are dictating the pace of the game you are deciding what's happening so I kind of like these actions even if they're not always the most sensible things sometimes you have to take risks. Again back to the stop and go and unsurprisingly Heathcock is able to make the correct decision in pulling Kokubo after his preparation and then he punishes him so cleanly you know this is a sign of a perfect pull is when you make them miss just enough to punish them straight away you don't have to go into a long attack long attacks are risky you know you give them a chance to set up a long defense punish them straight away and this is pretty much perfect fencing there from Colin Heathcock and this time Kokubo is sharper in his decision he makes his preparation and then straight away he goes okay so on this one Kokubo is appealing for attack no he thinks Heathcock's attack misses first and it's his remise his second action which hits now I know there's always going to be a lot of people in the comments saying oh Heathcock's foot landed first no one cares foot landing hasn't mattered for like five years now so this is a funny one I actually think a lot of people would give this to Heathcock when he finishes his preparation first he starts his lunge first maybe he makes a little bit of a mistake to be honest I really don't think this action needs to be split I think when we're looking at stuff with such a fine comb to search for small mistakes to search for technical mistakes in order to give a point one way or the other then it kind of goes against the spirit of fencing they both attack roughly at the same time it should be simultaneous so now on this one it looks like Heathcock has started guessing maybe he's just frustrated with the referee's decision there maybe that's affected his decision he rushes in without really any knowledge of Kokubo will step back so unsurprisingly he gets hit on preparation now this one is really interesting because just compare the depth of both fences preparations right compare how far they go forwards Kokubo is in front of the line the line is still between Heathcock's feet right so Kokubo has committed a lot more distance now I was wondering if perhaps Heathcock has hyper corrected right so before he rushed in too deep this time he goes very shadow now I wonder if Kokubo preempted this if he predicted that Heathcock would over correct like this giving him the chance to prepare just a little bit deeper to put a bit more pressure on Heathcock right put some pressure make him panic and swing and miss make him miss and then attack I don't know the frustrating thing with these things is you you don't know what's going on in the fencer's head you can only really guess from the outside so that's why these kind of analysis is always kind of limited like that like if people are able to do that consistently Colin usually loses again on this one Heathcock feels he looks he feels a little bit rushed he's not taking the time after his preparation that he would usually take with a little stutter after the preparation and so Kokubo so we really see here Kokubo is dictating however much he's going he's choosing what kind of pace they are fencing at in the middle when it goes a little bit faster that's what works for him I also want to point out something I've talked about many times before but I think it's really really important in the modern game is his bounce into flunge right it's such a good combination so good because the bounce and the flunge merge into each other so it's really hard to see the flunge coming I know I know on the video it might be a bit more obvious but when you're right opposite the fencer that flunge it just feels like it comes from nowhere and the power in his legs as well that's incredible look at that distance crazy okay another gamble by Kokubo with a deep parry riposte sometimes you have to gamble I like it it worked on this occasion but this time Kokubo going again for a bit of a random parry perhaps you know sometimes you get a little addicted to these things it happens once and then you get a bit overconfident you think okay I can guess where he's going you can't always guess where they're going you know this is a gamble sometimes you win sometimes you lose but still Kokubo is dictating how the match is going he's dictating the pace of the game so this one's somewhat called a lucky touch for Kokubo and in some ways it is because Heathcock has made the right decision right he's pulled him short just by the finest margin so he's ready to punish him straight away but Kokubo just lands a little remise to the wrist just by the finest of margins but so some would say this is a little lucky you know Kokubo has made the wrong decision but won the point but if you spend the hours in the gym if you work hard enough you do your fitness you do your S&C you do your footwork then you will get lucky sometimes so is it luck? I don't really think so and here again we see a really sharp action after Kokubo's first step lunging straight away I don't know if you would call this an attack off a line is it an attack with a step lunge or attack with a slight step lunge or is it a preparation and then a lunge whatever it's really sharp from Kokubo and you can see at this point Heathcock is mentally a bit lost he's not entirely sure what he's doing he's not really committing to the pole he's not really attacking but we all get in these situations right we we all feel ourselves lost sometimes and I think it's worth bearing in mind even top fencers make mistakes like this but we go back to Colin Heathcock's bread and butter step stop pull short and punish it's you this is how he wins matches and then and this is why Kokubo has really had to make sure to to to get out of his part of the game to really take away the time from Heathcock be sharper after his preparation and that's what was winning in points and here we have the winning point from Kokubo really sharp is he guessing is he just guessed that Heathcock is gonna step back I don't know but he's really committed to his attack and ultimately it's a correct decision so yeah guys thank you for watching I hope the audio is okay on this one but yeah if you enjoy the video be sure to subscribe follow me on Instagram I'm on TikTok now etc so yeah thank you for watching see you bye