Despite a glittering career at the forefront of British Fencing, Ben Peggs believes his biggest impact on the sport will come from the sidelines.
The wheelchair programme’s assistant performance coach is heading to Cardiff in October with his athletes for the Para Fencing European Championships, the first rung on the ladder towards Paralympic qualification.
The 35-year-old captained Team England to Commonwealth glory in the team foil in 2014, and travelled with the Olympic team as a training partner in 2016.
He said: “Everybody wants championship medals, but the major championships like Europeans, Worlds and Paralympic Games are always the ones everybody wants.
“We are looking to see performances that show their own trajectory to be ready for [the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028]. I'm sure those performances will come in the shape of medals and finals, but if they don't, it's not a panic.
“This is a stepping stone along the way to the big picture, which is those Paralympic medals. It is really important to us that we kick off the qualification period strongly and we get our athletes and teams qualified as quickly as possible.”
Peggs began his coaching career by helping Dimitri Coutya, who has since become a double Paralympic gold medallist at the Paris Games in 2024 and will be heading to Cardiff.
Alongside him, Oliver Lam-Watson and Piers Gilliver both boast multiple Paralympic medals in a 14-strong cohort that hopes to impress at the competition.
Peggs also coached an athlete to the Olympic Games in Paris for Team Cyprus, before heading back to Paris for Paralympics with the British team.
He also has his own European Games Team Gold medal as an athlete, so has a good idea of what it takes to win on the continental stage himself.
He added: “We've got a cohort of younger athletes in the transition pipeline. For them, this will be their first experience of major championships.
“It's incredible to see the athletes we've got in this generation and they are setting the path forward for some of our Olympic athletes to follow in their footsteps. They're an inspiring generation.”
Despite his success, Peggs endured a few near misses in his career, from narrowly missing out on the Rio 2016 squad to finishing one spot off qualification for the Games in Tokyo in 2021 after their funding was withdrawn.
He said: “It was gutting that I obviously hadn't quite qualified to be in the team myself but to go out there and support the team and the guys that I'd competed fiercely with to get us there, I did feel like a part of that jigsaw.
“We tried very hard and we used private sponsors and things like that to get us to head towards Tokyo and falling one place short was gut-wrenching. But I look back at it and it made me more resilient; it made me stronger.
“A career is a bit of a tapestry, right? There's a lot along the way but it has given me experience at the highest level, and that means that I feel like I'm on a very good platform to help any athlete, whether it be in a wheelchair or in a standing program.”
The Para Fencing European Championships will be held in Cardiff on the 6th-11th October 2026, seeing athletes from across Europe compete in the first qualification event for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games. For more information and tickets visit here
Share