Fencing

Posted by: Vanessa D. Aranovich - 9th grade, group C

What is the sport about?

Fencing is an Olympic sport in which you have to use a sword in order to touch the opponent. At the Olympic Games, there are male and female fencing. Both of them can be individual (one person vs the other) or in groups

What equipment do you need?

-        Lamé: Is an special protector vest you have to use for fencing, made of puncture-resistant material. Some of them have electronic circuits for identify if, and where, did the opponent attacked. It contains a mask , jacket, half- jacket, long pants , socks, gloves and, for women, breasts protector.

-        Sword: They are all dull-bladed, because the objective of fencing is to be a sport, not to hurt.

-        Electronic devices: they control the match, saying who have won or lost.

How many kinds of swords the are on fencing? What are they differences?

There are three kinds of weapons at fencing: The Foil, Épée (French word for “sword”) and the Sabre. The Foil, most common competition, is a metallic slim weapon, which is flexible in order to do not hurt the opponent. The Épée is the heaviest one, and the Sabre is the smallest and the lightest. Besides been slightly curved, it is flexible, just as the foil.

How to win?

Every time your sword makes contact with the opponent’s body (depending on where), you get a point.  The first competitor to make 15 points is the winner.

In both Foil and Épée, you have to touch the opponent with the tip of the sword – you can’t make contact with the blade, otherwise, you won’t get the point. However, in Foil you must touch only the adversary upper body (front and back) – this is what we call lunge. At Épée you can attack all the body. At Sabre, you can touch any part of the blade everywhere above the waist, but you mustn’t contact you sword with the opponent’s hands.  

At Foil and Sabre, the first one to attack has the priority for winning the point if there’s a simultaneous attack. If the person loses the attack, the priority passes for his opponent. Épée does not have this rule, so, if this kind of attack happens, everyone gets the point.

How do they know who and when to gives the point?

Every weapon has an electronic system with captures when the sword touches the opponent. If the weapon hits the opponent, a green or red light will turn on the winner’s side. If it lights up in both sizes, the judges have to decide who have won the match. If a white light turns up, it’s because an invalid movement had happened, and nobody gets the point.

At non-electronic fencing, the judge decides, with a team of four auxiliaries, who won. before the creation of those technologies, people used to dip the sword in ink, so if it touched the clothing, it would get colored.

What if someone loses him/ her weapon?

If the person loses the sword in the middle of the adversary attack, the opponent doesn’t have to stop: he or she can finish it, winning. However, if the opponent loses his movement, he or she must wait until the person gets the weapon back, otherwise, it would be anti-etic.

When and where did fencing come from?

Ancient painting shows that the Greeks and Egyptians already had swords more than three thousand years ago. There are also references to this kind of weapons in the Bible, and the old Japanese also used to have swords, called Katanas. However, fencing wasn’t a sport yet: blades were an way to win the battles, and those weapons were used on the wars.  

At Rome, there were the gladiators, warriors who used to fight until death in arenas, for entertain the public. At the Middle Age, there were knight duels and competitions.

In the 14^th century, the German Johannes Liechtenauer, the father of fencing, started learning and teaching sword techniques, and created a society of fencing masters. His followers of the German School improved and innovated it, turning fencing a sport. There are also Italian manuscripts of the same period teaching combat movements with daggers, swords and other kinds of weapons.

However, although sword fighting is a millenary art, the modern fencing only created sport’s real identity in the 19^th century. The first competitions started in the 1890’s, and the sport got famous enough for taking part at the first contemporary Olympic Games in 1896.

What are the most significant countries in fencing?

Though the sport was created in German and Italy (before the states purchase those names, of course), the real important countries at this sport nowadays are Hungary, the winner of most of the Fencing competitions in the first half of the 20^th century, Russian, and other countries in  the east of Europe.