CORRECTION ISSUED RE: #PARIS2024 SOCIAL MEDIA POST

Last updated: 8th July 2024

At the beginning of July, British Fencing received a complaint about a social media post published on X, formerly Twitter, on the 2nd May 2024.

The specific post is reproduced below:

This post was added to our social media channel after the final Olympic Zonal qualification tournament in Luxembourg, where GBR sadly failed to qualify anyone for the Olympic Games in Paris starting at the end of July.

The complaint mentioned that it ignored our athletes in wheelchair fencing who would be attending the Paralympics, also in Paris, starting at the end of August. (The hashtag #Paris2024 is used for both the Olympics and the Paralympics.)

At the time of posting, none of our wheelchair fencing athletes had officially qualified for Paris. The ranking positions were not finalised until later in May, and the invitations were ratified by ParalympicsGB in June. The announcement was eventually made  by both ParalympicsGB and British Fencing on 3rd July 2024. However, there was an expectation in the fencing community that athletes would be attending.

The original intention of the X/Twitter post above was to refer solely to Olympic athletes not attending the OIympic Games. A very similar post, using the same image, published at exactly the same moment on Facebook and Instagram made this clear by including the word ‘Olympics’.

However, in the process of editing the post for publishing on X/Twitter, this word was lost and with it, some specific nuance. British Fencing acknowledges that this post could – and should – have been worded better.

British Fencing apologises for any offence caused to any member of the fencing community for this oversight.

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