John Routledge

John has over 15 years experience of coaching primary and secondary school age childen. In 2009, he was sent by British Fencing to train in Bucharest Romania to qualify for his FIE international coaching diploma. There, he was trained by three times Olympian Petru Kuki and the 1995 world foil champion Dmitri Chevtchenko. The programme consisted of a minimum of thirty hours training per week amounting to over two hundred and forty hours of coaching education in total. Upon returning to Britain, England Fencing awarded him his level five foil coaching award. He also ran the foil coaching ‘master class’, at Loughborough University in 2010 at the British and England fencing coaches conference. For the past seven years, John has been undertaking 'Continuing Professional Development', learning from Great Britain's Olympic fencing coach Ziemek Wojciechowski. From 2017-2018, John worked as a ‘British Fencing Talent Coach’, running Talent Camps and helping to support the British Fencing Talent Pathway. In 2019, he coached the winning England under 17 and under 20 foil teams at the Cadet and Junior Commonwealth Fencing Championships. John is the author of the book ‘Foil Fencing - skills, strategies and training methods’. In 2023, he was foil coach and assistant team manager for the winning England team at the Senior Five Nations championships. He holds a current DBS certificate, has been trained and certified in First Aid and attended 'Safeguarding and Protecting Children' workshops. John's ethos is to aid the empowerment and development of young people through sport.