The Mary Peters Trust is celebrating 50 years since it was set up in 1975 to help talented young athletes achieve their sporting dreams.
This month we feature fencer Fiona Haldane, a Mary Peters Trust athlete in 1985. Fiona is still competing and in June 2025 returned from the 2025 European Veteran Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria with a fabulous bronze medal.
“I’M a great believer in sport for life,” says Team GB veterans fencer and retired biology teacher Fiona Haldane.
“Sport is life enhancing and life-changing, it provides excellent discipline as well as physical and mental fitness. I’ve learned so many life lessons through sport, made lasting friendships, travelled to many parts of the world, and have had so much fun.”
In her 75th year, Fiona is still having the time of her life competing for her clubs and at international level for Team GB veterans.
Her most significant win was at the Veteran World Championships in Krems, Austria in 2012 where she was thrilled to secure a third place podium in Women’s Epee in her age category at that time, 60-69.
“I beat a Russian, an American and a French fencer who were all seeded higher. Receiving a bronze medal in Austria is a key highlight of my fencing career,” Fiona reflects.
Back in 1973, it was an article in the Belfast Telegraph about different and more unusual sports that first got Fiona interested in fencing.
“I wanted to try something different, a sport I could be part of during weekday evenings and somehow fencing caught my eye. I joined the YMCA Club in South Belfast and was hooked. Soon I was fencing two nights a week and competing all over Ireland,” she relates.
With patience, practice and good coaching Fiona quickly improved and won the Northern Ireland Senior Epee and the Irish Open six times each. Fiona has also been the Irish National Champion five times.
It was back in 1985 that Fiona was awarded a Mary Peters Trust funding bursary alongside eight fencing colleagues, many of whom she keeps in touch with today.
Fiona’s award, as noted in a Trust 1985 annual report, was ‘to assist with preparations for and attendance at the World Championships,’ and she went on to compete that year for Ireland at the Worlds in Barcelona.
“It was wonderful to have the encouragement and backing of Mary and her Trust and it was a great experience, even though we (the Irish team) were soundly beaten,” she says.
Fiona has also represented Northern Ireland in several Commonwealth Games, the most exciting, she says, was in Whistler, Canada: “We fenced in a restaurant halfway up Blackcomb Mountain, reaching it each morning by ski-lift. It was stunningly beautiful and such an imaginative sporting venue.”
Fiona went on to compete at Veteran Commonwealths and secured a Gold in 2016 at Christchurch, New Zealand, saying: “It was magic hearing ‘Danny Boy’ playing as I was on the podium.
“Being part of the fencing community has quite simply enriched my life, and it all started with Mary Peters and the encouragement I received from her Trust. It’s no coincidence that I sought out a new sport in 1973 shortly after Mary’s Munich Olympics Gold medal win. It really inspired me spotlighting what women can achieve at the top level.
“As a biology teacher at an all-girls’ school I showcased female role models to encourage students to be the very best they can be. Chemist and DNA expert Rosalind Franklin was my science icon, and Lady Mary Peters, my sporting hero. Now I am a grandmother I pass these important messages onto my granddaughters.”
In addition to Mary and the Trust, Fiona is full of gratitude to all those who have helped her succeed over the years; from her coaches Bill Cumming and Mike Westgate to clubmates and committee members and, of course, her husband Robin who often travels with her to events throughout the world.
Fiona (left) in combat
Following her 2012 Worlds accolade, Fiona also picked up a bronze in the 70-79 age category at the 2023 European Championships, held in Thionville, France.
She’s enjoyed considerable success as a team fencer collecting a silver with Team GB 60 plus veterans in Zadar, Croatia in October 2022 (Grand Veterans tournament) and a bronze in the Europeans during May 2024 in Ciney, Belgium, commenting: “At the latter, Germany took first place followed by Italy and we beat the French in a nail-biting fence-off match for the bronze medal.”
Fiona currently fences at both Queen’s University and Stormont Fencing clubs and maintains she is having too much fun to give up. She also helps promote and develop Veterans fencing across Ireland.
‘Veterans’ actually begins at 40 and Fiona is keen to encourage experienced older fencers to move across and for other people to take up the sport. She is part of a Fencing Ireland sub-committee and is enjoying giving back to the sport and also encourages new up and coming talent.
“I’ve been truly blessed and love the friendship and camaraderie that sport brings – it’s a real life-long pleasure. It has quite simply enriched my life and I’m so grateful to all who have made it possible,” she insists.
Fiona and coach Mike Westgate during her bronze medal event in Bulgaria
