An American’s guide to Olympic Fencing

Team USA hasn’t always been good at swordfighting. BUT NOW WE ARE. So you should learn the difference between sabre and épée.

This is part 5 of RINGS RODGE, a roughly 15-part series where Olympics obsessive and journalist Rodger Sherman breaks down a different sport every day heading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics. You can probably get serious previews of the most popular sports on other sites… here, we’re doing unserious previews of sports that aren’t regularly on TV in between the four years between Olympics. Rodger didn’t really time things right so he’s not going to be able to get to all the sports BUT HE’S GOING TO TRY HIS BEST TO DO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

Today: Fencing!!!!

I… uhhh…. forgot about the mirror when I was taking this picture. That’s Team USA épéeist Hadley Husisian and also me and some journalists.

We’re doing fencing at the request of Jon in the comments. There are more sports than there are days left before the Olympics, so let me know which ones you want covered, and I’ll try as hard as I can to get to them. (Especially if you’re a paying subscriber!)

Why should I watch Olympic fencing?

It’s literally swordfighting. To be honest, they’re losing fans by sticking with “fencing” when we could call it “swordfighting.”

Again, I hate to turn every sport into “is this cool enough to be in a movie,” but, like… swordfighting is the most dramatic thing possible! They even put swordfights in Star Wars, even though there’s no reason people with super-fast space planes and planet-destroying bombs and and laser guns and war robots should ever have to do hand-to-hand swordfighting! That’s how cool fencing is.

How does Olympic fencing work?

There are three types of fencing: épée, foil, and sabre. Each event has a different sword and slightly different rules, meaning different skill sets apply to each. A quick rundown:

Foil: The fencers can only score with the tip of the sword, and only on hits to their opponent’s midsection. It requires the most precision and the points involve the most swordplay, as it’s possible to defend the small target area effectively by parrying opposing strikes.

Épée: Like the foil, except fencers can score on the entire body. It’s the most defensive and strategic form of fencing, as the two fencers can spend a minute or more on a single point bobbing back and forth, sussing each other out, looking for openings and protecting weaknesses.

Sabre: The only one where you can score points with the entire sword, not just the tip. This means it’s the fastest, most aggressive form of fencing, with slashing hits and jumping lunges to score points. Points often last under a second.

I asked American sabre fencer Eli Dershwitz, the 2023 World Champion, what the different swords say about the people who fight with them.

Okay, so which sword is the coolest?

Sabre, easily. Nobody would be scared of an épée-toothed tiger! Nobody would worry about losing to the Buffalo Foils! (I guess people don’t worry that much about losing to the Sabres either… but you get my point.)

In sabre, the action is more exciting, with jumps and lunges and speed. And it just seems more like a realistic swordfight. If somebody cuts my arm off, I can’t say “hey, doesn’t count! You used the side of the sword instead of the tip!”

I’m sure this is going to send a horde of angry people with swords to my house, but I’m not worried. What are you gonna do with those foils and épées? Poke me?

Hey Rings Rodge, tell us a story!

Sure!

So, I went to high school with a kid named Daryl. He bragged about everything, and he wasn’t necessarily good at a lot of the things he bragged about. Like he’d tell us how good he was at basketball, and then we’d play basketball with him, and he was mid. One of the things he bragged about was fencing, but it’s not like our high school had a fencing team, so I kinda assumed he wasn’t good at fencing. Then he transferred out of the school and I assumed that was the last I’d hear of him…

And then he won back-to-back-to-back-to-back NCAA sabre championships. Then he made the London Olympics. Then he let me write a story about him. While in Rio, I went to watch him compete. The semifinal came down to a single point, which Daryl won with a single strike, a combination of pure speed and confidence:

He won a silver medal, the all-time best performance by an American man at the Olympics.

The way I see it, the seemingly misplaced self-belief which made me skeptical of Daryl in high school is probably what allowed him to be elite in a sport where confidence is critical. If a sabre fencer has any doubt in their mind, they might end up being a millisecond slow, and that could make all the difference.

What’s not so great about fencing?

This sport is corrupt as heeeeelllllllll. Like, every sport is a little bit corrupt, and international sports are especially corrupt… and fencing might win the gold medal. Watch the most recent episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, which uncovers pretty strong evidence of widespread judging bias. It all goes back to

It all goes back to the longtime president of the international fencing federation was Alisher Usmanov, a Russian billionaire who has been referred to as “one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs.” He stepped down as fencing president in 2022, around the same time war-related international sanctions on Usmanov made it virtually impossible for him to travel and fulfill his presidential duties.

But there are some telltale signs that the sport is still run by one of Putin’s close friends. For example: The most accomplished fencer in the Olympics is Ukrainian Olha Kharlan, a four-time Olympic medalist and four-time World Champion in sabre—but she almost didn’t make it to Paris.

At the 2023 World Championships, Kharlan had a first-round matchup against Anna Smirnova, a Russian fencer competing in the World Championships as a neutral participant due to the ongoing ban on Russian athletes in most international competitions because of their ongoing invasion of Kharlan’s homeland of Ukraine.

After an easy victory, Kharlan reached out her blade in a gesture of respect, but Smirnova refused to accept the blade tap, demanding the customary post-fight handshake. Kharlan walked away in frustration, but Smirnova stayed for 50 minutes. Here’s the uncut video of Smirnova dramatically waiting for Kharlan to come back—she really hams it up.

Kharlan was disqualified for refusing to shake Smirnova’s hand, which threw a massive wrench into her ability to qualify for the Olympics, since the World Champs are a massive source of qualifying points.

Supposedly, the draws at the World Champs were random. But the odds of Kharlan, the only Ukrainian competing in women’s sabre, being drawn against Smirnova, the only Russian competing in the women’s sabre, are astronomical. And unbelievably, the exact same thing happened in the men’s épee competition, the only other event with both Ukrainian and Russian competitors. The odds of both Ukraine-Russia matchups being scheduled in the first round of two separate 64-person randomly drawn bracket… almost impossible. (Anybody wanna run the math in the comments?)

It’s the sort of thing you might do if you were an extremely powerful Russian billionaire looking to embarrass an exceptional Ukrainian sportswoman. Things ended up working out for Kharlan, as IOC president Thomas Bach—a former gold medal-winning fencer—personally guaranteed Kharlan an Olympic spot. And the handshake rule has since been wiped from the books. But it was too late for Kharlan to win a fifth world championship, as she remained DQ-ed from the event. Luckily, there won’t be any Russian competitors in Paris.

Can any Americans win?

Yes—we’re good at fencing now!

The history of American fencing is pretty bleak. Team USA only won a single fencing gold in the 20th century—and that was all the way back in 1904… in an event called “singlestick”… and only three people were competing in the event… and they were all American… and singlestick was never contested at any other games, before or after. (Probably because America is so dominant. Singlestick champions of the world, these colors don’t run!)

Between 1964 and 2000, the only American fencing medal was a sabre bronze at the 1984 LA games. But starting with the 2004 Athens games, the Americans have been a contender. Team USA has won 16 medals in the five Olympics since, including three golds. And this could be their best Olympics yet.

We actually got a gold in Tokyo! Lee Kiefer won the women’s foil, and is back to defend her title:

Kiefer was a four-time NCAA champion for the Notre Dame Fencing Irish—not their official name, but I’m rolling with it. She’s never won an individual world championship, but holds the No. 1 spot in the world rankings. She’s currently in medical school at the University of Kentucky, balancing her studies and winning gold medals, which makes the rest of us feel stupid and bad. She’s married to fellow Olympic fencer Gerek Meinhardt, who is also in medical school. I think I annoyed both Lee and Gerek at the Team USA Media Summit by going up to Gerek and bothering him on his off day—he came to New York just to be a supportive red carpet husband for Lee as she went through dozens of interviews.

Olympic fencer Greek Meinhardt, holding his gold-medal-winning wife’s drink, credential, laptop, and proudly filming her getting interviewed.

Another likely medalist for Team USA is Dershwitz, the guy in the video above. He won last year’s sabre world championships—only the second American man ever to win a World Championship. There’s also foilist Nick Itkin, who took silver at worlds and is ranked #2 in the world.

We also have teams in all three events on both the men’s and women’s sides, in which three fencers take turns over the course of a bout. Team USA tends to perform a little better in team events than individual ones because we have solid depth. American teams rank in the top six of the FIE rankings in every event besides men’s épée, so I’d expect multiple medals from teams as well.