Deja Vu All Over Again Hot Olympic Fencing Style!

Déjà vu All Over Again Hot Olympic Fencing Style!

By Nick Evangelista

The best thing I can say about the fencing at the 2024 Olympics in Paris is that it is over. The public embarrassment of individuals attempting to saw each other in half with fencing implements, the dismal poking matches, and the overblown histrionics of the participants was a monumental boiling hot mess. For all the self-congratulations of the fencing community, the PR of posing with medals, and all the nonsense talk of “fencing greatness,” it was the worst exhibition of the sport I’ve ever seen in my own fifty-four years of fencing. Ugly, undisciplined, and out-of-control are kind descriptions of this latest high-level fencing train wreck. Not that I am surprised. I wrote about this dismal fencing trend twenty years ago, and, without a doubt, it has escalated to new depths in the ensuing decades. With that being said, it might be interesting and enlightening to read my assessment of Olympic sport fencing in 2004, published that same year in Fencers Quarterly Magazine:

OLYMPIC DREAMING

Much has been made of the American fencing gold and bronze medals at the recent Summer Olympics 2004 in Athens Greece. And it certainly was a feat; that is, if you only consider the sport qualities of what took place. And that, as one might suspect, is where the USFA is coming from. It continually congratulates itself for a job well done. One gets the impression that we are now at dawn of some Golden for American fencer. The sky’s the limit.

 Yay!

I must have been watching some other Olympic Fencing

I’m confused. I don’t recall seeing any superior fencing during the Summer Olympics. Aside from the pomp and hype and glitz, the fencers I saw on TV—to be fair, fencers of many countries—were lumbering, off-balanced tanks, who swatted wildly and postured histrionically across the Olympic fencing strips like ill-mannered brats in some martial kindergarten pageant.

The whapping was energetic, as was the bouncing and the leaping and the poking, but it was only that. Three weapons fenced as one. But it was the Olympics and so there been some grand design there.

 Don’t you think so?

Olympiggies

We have an image in our brain of Olympic splendor, the joy of victory, the agony of defeat, pure sport for the love of sport, just as Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern Olympics in 1896, envisioned it. This is correct, isn’t t? Well, maybe not. This is an electronically implanted brainwash. Here’s an awkward question: what about the drug-taking to enhance performances, the administrative scandals, the professional athletes reinvented as amateurs, the excessive nationalism, the pouty athletes--especially Americans—who complain when they only win second or third place medals, and the obvious greedy grab for the cash?

Is the Olympics even about sport anymore? Athletic Competition is just a side issue. Maybe it should be recognized for what it really: money-driven entertainment. It is the ultimate reality sport show, whose most purposeful goal is commercial domination of the airwaves. But, like most reality shows, if you have a life, the Olympics is bone brittle boring. It is a chore to watch. Shouldn’t the Olympic Games be something more?

I guess not.

A suggestion: beer helps!

Dream On

But let us get back to Olympic fencing.

So, the United has grabbed two fencing medals. Great! It is a very nice athletic achievement. Notice I said “athletic,” and not “fencing.” I might ask another awkward question at this point: was the U.S. really cooking, or was everything on those Olympian pistes just mundane?

How dare I suggest anything but the notion that U.S. fencing has made the quantum leap in its evolutionary progress? Oh, what a poor spirited Scrooge I am to rain on American fencing’s golden moment. The USFA has suggested that Olympic gold has spurred the spirit of fencing in the United States. American Fencing Magazine recently ran an article titled, “Fencing is Cool and Hot: Taking Advantage,” which is bout fencing’s new public image, and how to capitalize on it. AF said the word “hot,” thus, it must be so.

Well, we might end up seeing somebody’s picture on a Wheaties box, or a “fencing” moment with Jay Leno or David Letterman, but that will probably be the extent of fencing’s hotness.

Of course, fencing does not need to be “hot” to exist or prosper.  Fencing has existed for hundreds of years without a superficial link to the masses. “Hot” implies fads, and fads never last.  Is that all the USFA can point to in order to attract fencers? It wasn’t what drew me to fencing when I started taking fencing lessons thirty-five years ago. It was fencing’s timelessness.

Non-Fencers Speak

Moreover, if the USFA thinks that America was impressed with Olympic fencing—and it obviously does—I believe it is more than sadly mistaken.

 How do I know this?

I teach fencing (have you already guessed this?), and sometimes I wear a jersey with my school’s name on it. This is good, simple, free advertising. It gets the word around that there is fencing in the area, and it receives immediate feedback. When there is a question like, “Oh, do you fence?” or “I’ve always wanted to learn to fence,” out comes the trusty business card.

During the Athens Olympics, my shirt brought out other questions and comments, ones even I was surprised to hear: “Was that fencing I saw on TV? It was so boring.” “Why did those fencers’ heads light up. That was kind of weird.” “Those fencers were just kind of swatting at each other.” “I though fencing was kind of neat until I saw it on TV. What happened?” “Is that what you teach?” “Those fencers were sure snotty.” “What was all that screaming and fist clenching about? They all seemed so angry.” And, most telling, “I turned the channel when the fencing came on.”

Some of the remarks I fielded were quite hostile. No big deal when it’s only a couple of people. But I kept hearing these kind of rumblings over and over again, maybe on three dozen separate occasions. And this was always from non-fencers, who do not know me or my traditional fencing agenda. And this only from those who actually saw my shirt. I finally stopped wearing the offending apparel. Déjà vu can be a real bitch.

I might add, many of my students were also pelted with negative fencing comments. This leads one to wonder just how many other people left unimpressed by what they saw on the Olympic fencing strips. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? I don’t know. Make up your own mind.

The USFA may think it has scored a major sporting triumph this year, but I don’t think they realize just how poorly fencing may have come off to the viewing public. To be sure, the impressionable will be impressed, and  some of the fencers’ parents. But that is about it. The USFA, in the end, is only fooling itself.

Why Comment?

There will be those who read my words, and simply dismiss it, saying, “What a complainer!” So, why am I saying anything? Mine won’t be a popularly held view, especially when Olympic Medals are hanging from American necks. Shouldn’t anything Olympian automatically be revered and bowed down to?

I will say this one more time: I was not impressed with the fencing I saw at the Olympic Games. And, again, this is not just an American thing. The Europeans provided their share of ugliness, too. The fencing was strong and fast and aggressive; but did it aspire to anything that might be called great? The answer to that is: no. To quote Shakespeare, it was at best, “sound and fury signifying nothing.” Simply put, some people got some expensive doo-dads for running around and poking each other.

I think I have some discernment regarding fencing, and I know what I see. I don’t need to look at the results—somebody always wins and somebody always loses—I look at the process by which those results were achieved. “Process” is the tool by which ends are reached. When you have two bodies trundling heavily at each other, somebody is bound to hit something. When there is no physical opposition from either body, both will hit. One of the two will hit sometimes microseconds ahead of the other, or they will hit exactly at the same time. If one is then labeled victorious in that collision through the electronic manipulation of time, should the results impress anyone? This is sport fencing. In the Olympics or anywhere else it  is entrenched in the world, all of it the same scoring box-oriented nonsense. Worthy of praise and awards of gold? Maybe in the Bizarro World.

The USFA tells us that we have witnessed a great feat in Olympic fencing in 2004, with n American fencer grabbing a gold medal. But have we witnessed greatness? I do not think so. Put the win in context. Look at the running, the slapping and poking, the bad manners, and the clownish performance art that was were put on public display and tell me with a straight face that this was superior anything. Then, as the USFA has done, insist that fencing is moving to new heights, and that U.S. fencing will be leading the way. They seem to believe that the winning of one fencing gold medal is enough to motivate an entire population to take up fencing.

 Why should this be so?

Only those interested in aggression and bad manners will be impressed. To think anything else is a hopeless delusion, and does nothing to further fencing in the real world. For years, the USFA has been lowering its standards to appeal to a fast-food mentality. This is a dead end with no escape. This leads to six-year-olds fencing sabre, and the perfection of method acting histrionics to convince poor officiating to accept touches that even God couldn’t decipher. But this is the expected thinking of an organization whose number one stated goal is not to further fencing for the values it imparts, but to create a successful international fencing elite.

What fencing needs is order and constructive, intelligent thinking to move it forward. If fencing is to grow in appositive way, it must be fencing itself that causes this growth, and that means a fencing with solid standards.  The USFA needs to stop patting itself on the back, because the job is not well done, it is fried to a crisp. Fencing is not simply a “win” delivery system. It is also an art and science and a life skill. Maybe, one day, the USFA will get the idea of presenting fencing for all its actual virtues. But most likely it won’t, because, frankly, they don’t seem to know what those virtues are, beyond the colors gold, silver, and bronze.

Why am I saying anything now if fencing is doomed? Because I love fencing—the real fencing I grew up with—and I would like to see that fencing, with the logic of the sharp point, flourish and prosper again, especially in the United States. But in over one hundred years of AFLA/USFA guidance, it has not done that. The inmates running the asylum say, “Get used to it.” I won’t do that.  Let’s get real about fencing. We have eyes and minds to judge what’s going on in the fencing world.

 Were you impressed by the fencing in the 2004 Olympics?

BACK TO THE FUTURE 2024                                                                                    

To my traditional way of thinking, the fencing of the Paris Olympics was not fencing, any more than golf is fencing, or hopscotch is fencing, or checkers is fencing. It, too, is another something. It feigns fencing, because all the accoutrements of the game are still there. But sportfencing (one word) is not fencing. As presented in 2024, it displayed all the subtleties of a summertime roadkill. The running, the screaming, the hopping, the leaping, the poking, the nonsensical exchanges, the absurd gymnastics, the disregard of basic rules, the tantrums, and the ever-present cheap theatrics of it all, were a cry for help. But there is no help for something locked tightly in triviality, its only expressed meaning to conjure up flashing lights on a mechanical device. A mechanical device, by the way, that holds the life force and subverting intelligence of sportfencing: electricity. Take away the watts and volts, the mechanical device falls silent, and all you have left is the sound of sportfencers pounding away mindlessly on each other. Technology will forever circumvent all attempts at developing either genuine skill or mastery in an otherwise shallow game of bean counting. To insist the aforementioned expenditure of Olympic energy this past month was fencing is a postmodern delusion.

To the eyes of someone who has been fencing without pause for fifty-four years, the disorganized mess of sportfencing is a dead object, but I am sure it will die much deader deaths as time goes on. Such is the way of the world. As sport fencers used to say about the flight from traditional fencing into the wonderful world of flick mania in the 1980s, Get used to it.

 And so it goes!