Rock icon, 66, worth £100m competes in elite fencing competition and only loses to Olympic champion
IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson showed a flash of the blade as he came 13th in an elite fencing tournament.
The legendary metal singer, 66, proved to be a real trooper when he represented Great Britain in the veteran’s category at the prestigious Circuit Europeen tournament in Lille, France.
Dickinson, who replaced the late Paul Di’Anno as Maiden’s vocalist in 1981, used to train with Team GB’s Olympic fencing squad in the 1980s.
And he showed there’d been no wasted years as he put in an admirable performance against some of Europe’s top names.
Dickinson, who is worth a whopping £100million, first made light work of Denmark’s Jeiner Simon in a 10/4 victory.
But he came unstuck against France’s Jolyot Pascal in the next, losing 10/1 to the 1980 Olympic gold medallist.
Dickinson, who left Maiden in 1993 before rejoining six years later, ended up finishing 13th in the overall rankings as German’s Hans Martin Raeker took home the top prize.
Reflecting on the tournament, he said: “The last time I came here to Lille, it was in 2000 with Iron Maiden to do rehearsals for the world tour.
“But now, I am here for a fencing competition — a veteran foil for older people, like me.
“(Opponent Jolyot?) He’s not bad…”
As well as being the singer of Maiden and his own solo band, Dickinson is also a licensed commercial pilot who brews his own beer while running a plane-fixing firm that rakes in £400,000 every month.
The ace has just come off the back of another epic tour with Maiden, who have sold 130million albums worldwide, called ‘The Future Past’.
The show combined some of the band’s biggest songs with other hits from their latest album, ‘Senjutsu’, as well as several deep-cuts from their rarely-played 1986 record ‘Somewhere In Time’.
Maiden, formed in east London in 1975, performed 81 gigs in front of 1.4million fans across the world.
And to celebrate their 50th anniversary, this year sees them embark on a new production — the ‘Run For Your Lives’ world tour — which will focus exclusively on the first nine studio albums from their collection of 17.
But there will be a noticeable difference on stage, as Maiden will be without long-serving drummer Nicko McBrain following his retirement from live playing last year.