After taking his first real break from fencing since he started in 1994, Richard joins us to discuss his career, travels and all sorts of nonsense while sipping his afternoon Oolong tea. We go through training habits and philosophies and how he believes that he managed to turn his hobby into his profession with some tips for fencers that want to do the same (including how he deals with jet lag). We also talk about the Olympic qualification process, a topic that Richard is extremely well positioned to comment on considering that he took a different route to each Olympic Games he qualified for: individual ranking, zonal place, wildcard and team ranking. Which begs the question, are individual and team fencing really two different sports? There’s so much in here that it’s hard to write about it all but just a few more topics which include: playing the bagpipes in the park, we get to meet his lovely wife (who comments on how he is at home), hearing some of his many linguistics skills and how Ben made it into Croatian folklore.