Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson Finishes 13th in Fencing Competition

With Iron Maiden enjoying a reprieve from the road before their massive 2025 world tour starts, frontman and sword aficionado Bruce Dickinson hopped over to France to compete in a prestigious fencing competition.

Dickinson placed 13th (out of 31) in the veterans category of the Circuit Européen 2025 in Fâches-Thumesnil, which is outside of Lille. “The last time that I came here [to Lille], it was in 2000 with Iron Maiden to do rehearsals for the world tour,” Dickinson told the French outlet La Voix du Nord (via CNN). “But now, I am here for a fencing competition — a veteran foil for older people, like me.”

Dickinson won his first-round bout against Jeiner Simon of Denmark before losing to France’s Jolyot Pascal. (You can check out some footage of Dickinson in the tournament below.) 

While Dickinson has been fencing since he was a teenager, Jolyot provided some particularly stiff competition: He’s a three-time Olympic medalist, winning gold in the team foil event and silver in the individual competition at the 1980 Moscow games. “He is not bad,” Dickinson quipped of Jolyot.

Dickinson got into swords and fencing when he was 14, after a metalworking teacher at his boarding school in England — who also happened to teach fencing — showed him how to forge a blade and then how to use it. Dickinson has been fencing ever since and even trained with the British Olympic team in the Eighties. 

He’s also built up a “very small collection” of antique swords and foils, as he told Rolling Stone last year (during a visit, no less, to the Arms and Armor room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City). Some of his favorite items include a defensive left-hand dagger from the 15th century and a Napoleonic cavalry saber. 

Dickinson and Iron Maiden are set to kick off their Run for Your Lives World tour this May, with dates in Europe scheduled throughout the summer. No additional shows have been announced yet, but the tour is expected to stretch into 2026. 

The trek will be Iron Maiden’s first without longtime drummer Nicko McBrain, who announced his retirement from the road last year. McBrain has since been replaced by Simon Dawson, a session drummer, who’s also spent years playing with Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris in the group British Lion.