Bath-designed seat, which can be built at home, was commissioned by British Fencing to increase participation in the sport
British Paralympic fencers won a total of six medals at the 2024 Paralympic Games, continuing the country’s record as one of the sport’s top competitors.
Now, a simple and low-cost wooden frame called the ’SwordSeat(TM)’, which can be built using minimal tools and materials, aims to make wheelchair fencing accessible to many more clubs and participants.
Designed by engineers at the University of Bath in collaboration with British Fencing, the SwordSeat is a pair of chairs that correctly position competitors for combat. The simple six-piece slot-together design means it can be constructed by potential participants of the sport, or by local clubs, for around £150 worth of plywood.
Plans for the seat are available online now at the British Fencing website. An official launch event is planned to take place at the University of Bath’s world-class Sports Training Village in January 2025.
Only a handful of the UK’s 400+ fencing clubs have wheelchair fencing rigs, which cost more than £5,000 and need to have wheelchairs attached, totalling over £15,000. This leaves aspiring competitors facing significant barriers to trying the sport - so the SwordSeat has been created to offer a low-cost alternative.
The SwordSeat is the creation of Dr Ed Elias, a Senior Lecturer in the University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and his Integrated Design Engineering student Conor Roberts.
Dr Ed Elias says: "The SwordSeat is our response to the prohibitive cost and equipment requirements of wheelchair fencing.
"What’s surprising to many is that wheelchair fencers don’t need to move their chair when fencing - instead they are fixed into position. By removing these complicated elements and simplifying our design to the essentials, we’ve created a seat that is cheap and easy to build but meets the needs of anyone hoping to start out in the sport."
British Fencing Inclusion Officer (Disability), Rick Rodgers, who initiated the project, says: "The SwordSeat is a game changer. It’s really going to open up the grassroots and give us a much larger pool of participants to enjoy this incredible activity and potentially become future Paralympic athletes.
"Reducing the equipment cost by more than 90% makes it roughly the price of a fencing mask or jacket, something which clubs loan to new fencers. It’ll save participants who need to fence sitting down from spending thousands of pounds on a new wheelchair before they even know if they like the sport."
He adds: "The SwordSeat means British Fencing now has an end-to-end offer for people looking to try the sport, with support from the grassroots up to elite level.
"We hope to see a pair of SwordSeats not only in every club in the country, but also being used in schools and a range of places where getting access to the wheelchairs and equipment has until now been impossible due to the price tag."
The SwordSeat’s six parts can be cut from a single piece of 25mm plywood board, 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 rightor 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.
The University of Bath, which is recognised as one of the world’s top 10 universities to study sport, is home to the Team Bath Sports Training Village and the Wheelchair Fencing National Performance Centre, where ParalympicsGB medal winners Piers Gilliver, Dimitri Coutya and Oliver Lam-Watson are based.
A Bath alumnus who represented the University in fencing while a student, Dr Elias says the complexities of wheelchair fencing were apparent before he started the project: "I’d come across wheelchair fencing during competitions and was always struck by how unnecessarily complex the equipment seemed and how difficult to set up it was."
He adds: "Standing fencing is a lot about your footwork as well as your swordsmanship, whereas wheelchair fencing is all’about your swordsmanship. It’s a fantastic sport that we think more people would be involved in if the facilities can be accessed - we hope the SwordSeat makes that a reality."
