Casablanca is hosting another international sports event.
This time, people are bringing swords.
The city is set to host an international Fencing World Cup from October 15 to 18, bringing athletes from more than 90 countries to Morocco.
Yes, fencing.
The sport where competitors wear all white, move ridiculously fast and somehow manage to turn sword fighting into one of the most technical events at the Olympics.
The Casablanca competition will feature both individual and team events, giving some of the world’s top fencers another opportunity to collect results on the international circuit.
For Morocco, it is also another example of the country hosting major sports competitions outside the usual football bubble.
Because while football will obviously dominate headlines here forever, Morocco has increasingly become a stop for international events across tennis, martial arts, motorsport, equestrian competition and now fencing.
And fencing deserves a little more attention than it usually gets.
The sport combines speed, strategy and reflexes, with points sometimes decided in fractions of a second.
Basically, chess if everyone had swords and cardio.
The World Cup also gives Moroccan athletes the rare opportunity to compete at home against international opponents without having to travel across the world first.
Casablanca gets the crowd.
The athletes get the stage.
And anyone who has never watched fencing before gets four days to discover that the sport is much more intense than those white outfits make it look.
