Fencing History

Fencing has been an ever-present at the Olympics; the foil and sabre competitions taking place in the inaugural Games at Athens, with the epee added four years later in Paris.

Olympic fencing has been dominated by Europeans.

The only non-Europeans to win individual titles since 1904 are China's Luan Jijie, who was women's foil champion in 1984, and Mariel Zagunis, of the United States, who won the sabre in Athens.

Fencing is one of the few sports to have acknowledged professionals prior to the 1980s. In fact, the original Olympic rules, written by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, that specifically stated that professional fencers, called masters, could compete in competitions.

Pickings have been slim for Britons, but there was a purple patch in the late Fifties and Sixties when Allan Jay (1960) and Henry Hoskyns (1964) won silver in the epee, and Gillian Sheen (1956) won a gold medal in the foil. Sheen is the only British gold medallist. 

Technical

There are three weapons in the fencing armoury; the foil, epee and sabre.

The foil is a light, flexible weapon and, like the epee, only scores points if the tip hits the torso (not arms, legs or head).

The epee is much heavier and is the traditional duelling weapon.

The sabre is based on the military weapon.

It is light and is the only weapon you can score points with from a hit with the blade edge.

Points are scored electronically.

The fencer wears a lame, a jacket that contains metal fibres, and when the weapon, which also has an electric wire running through it, touches the jacket it completes the circuit and a hit is registered.

All contests take place upon a piste, a raised dias that is two metres wide and 14m long for the foil, 18 m for the epee and sabre.

The Major Players

Italy and France have been the undisputed masters of the sword down the Olympic years. Between them they have won 96 of the 191 gold medals awarded since 1896 with Hungary and the Soviet Union the only other countries to have reached double-figures. The most famous swordsman was Italy's Nedo Nadi, who at the 1920 Games in Antwerp won five out of the six events, which stood as an Olympic record until broken by swimmer Mark Spitz in Munich 52 years later.

Bluffer's guide

The word fence was originally a shortening of the Middle English defens, that came from an Italian word, defensio, in origin a Latin word. The first known use of defens in reference to English swordmanship is in William Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor: "Alas sir, I cannot fence." 

Useless Information

Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson is an accomplished fencer and Neil Diamond won a fencing scholarship to New York University, but he did not finish the course. He took up song-writing instead.