About the sport of fencing

The object of fencing is to effectively score a set number of points on your opponent before he scores that number on you. Points are scored by getting touches on your opponent. How you can get touches varies from weapon to weapon. Bouting takes place on a strip, usually made of non-reactant metal. A bout is usually 3 minutes for 5 point bouts and 3 x 3 minute sessions for 15 point bouts in the case of foil and epee. No time is kept in the case of sabre where a rest period of 1 minute is introduced once the first fencer scores 8 hits.

The history of fencing

Modern fencing was “born” in Spain. The first books on fencing were published by Sierge deValera in 1471, and two fencing masters, Pons from Perpignan and Pedro de Torre, in 1474.

Fencing used to be a combat sport played with a rapier. However, more people died from dueling than from fighting in war.

During the mid-seventeenth century, the colichemard replaced the rapier. Its thin, light blade favored actions with the point.

In 1650, the fioretta, meaning flower in Italian, became the training weapon for duelling. The fioretta is now known as the fleuret in French and the foil in English.

Fencing was one of the sports played in the 1896 Olympic Games. These games only featured foil and sabre fencing for men. Epee was introduced in 1900. Epee was electrified in the 1936 games, foil in the 1956, and sabre in 1988. Women’s foil was first contested in the 1924 Olympic Games, and Women’s epee was contested for the first time in 1996, but has been part of the World Championships since 1989. Women’s sabre was first fenced at the Olympics in Athens in 2004 and the first women’s sabre team event took place at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Modern fencing is one of the safest sports around. Though weapons are used, they have blunt tips, and the sides of the blade are dull. Fencers wear masks, gloves, plastrons (underarm protectors), chest protectors, jackets, and breeches for full protection.

Foil fencing

The foil is used as a thrusting weapon only. Any contact with the side of the blade (a slap) does not result in a score. Modern foils average 89 cm in length, and have standardised, tapered, quadrangular blades which are designed to present a blunt (and therefore non-lethal) tip should they snap.

Foil is governed by right of way rules. As such, points are not necessarily awarded to the first fencer to hit, but to the fencer who hits with priority. Priority is established when one fencer starts an attack. After this, the defender can gain priority by making the attack fail (e.g. by making a parry) then initiating a counter attack or riposte. The initial attacker regains priority if the defender's riposte fails. The priority continues to exchange between the fencers until a hit is scored.

As of January 2009, the target has been extended to include that part of the bib below a horizontal line at shoulder level, 1.5 to 2 cm below the chin.

Recently, the FIE changed the timing in the scoring box to minimise the flick. The foil uses a normally closed electrical circuit, and any break in the circuit (broken wire, loose barrel, grip, or other parts, and especially depressing the tip) opens the circuit and the scoring box illuminates the appropriate light.

Prior to this timing change, a break of 2 milliseconds in the circuit would fire the light, which is one reason the flick hit worked so frequently if properly executed -- even a relatively flat hit on the back would move the tip around inside the barrel enough for that momentary break in the circuit and fire the light.

However, the timing has now been reset so that the tip must be depressed for at least 15 milliseconds before the lights will be triggered. This is a seemingly tiny change, but it has resulted in a significant drop in the number of flicks that are successful, especially those to the back.

The score is kept in foil fencing by counting the number of hits which land on the opponent's valid target area and have priority. These hits are called touches. Any hit with the tip of the weapon will halt play; however, only hits which arrive on the valid target area can potentially be scored. Bouts are typically either scored up to either five or fifteen touches depending on the format of the competition.

Epee fencing

A modern épée for use by adult fencers has a blade which measures 90 cm from the bell guard to the tip, and weighs between 300 and 450 g. Leon Paul has created a very lightweight 230g épée. Épées for use by children under 12 are shorter and lighter.

The épée has a three sided blade, in contrast to the foil and sabre which are rectangular in cross section. In competitions a valid épée touch is scored if a fencer touches the opponent with enough force to depress the tip; by rule, this is a minimum of 750 g of pressure. Since the hand is a valid target, the bell guard is much larger than that of the foil. The bell guard is typically made of aluminum or stainless steel. The tip is wired to a connector in the bell guard, then to an electronic scoring device or "box". The bell guard, blade, and handle of the épée are all grounded to the scoring box to prevent hits to the weapon from registering as touches.

In the groove formed by the V-shaped blade, there are two thin wires leading from the far end of the blade to a connector in the bell guard. These wires are held in place with strong glue. The amount of glue is kept to a minimum as in the unlikely (but possible) case that a fencer manages a touch in that glue, the touch would be registered on the electrical equipment, as the glue and blade are not grounded. But in the event of point to point and point to glue hits, a point should not be awarded. A "body cord" with a three-pronged plug at each end is placed underneath the fencer's clothing and attached to the connector in the bellguard, then to a wire leading to the scoring box. The scoring box signals with lights (one for each fencer) and a tone each time the tip is depressed.

The tip of an épée comprises several parts including: the mushroom-shaped movable tip; its housing or "barrel" which is threaded to the blade; a contact spring; and a return spring. The tips are generally held in place by two small grub screws, which thread into the sides of the tip through elongated openings on either side of the barrel. The screws hold the tip within the barrel but are allowed to travel freely in the openings. While this is the most common system, screwless variations do exist. The return spring must allow the tip to support a weight of 750 g  without registering a touch. Finally, an épée tip must allow a shim of 1.5 mm to be inserted between the tip and the barrel, and when a 0.5 mm shim is inserted and the tip depressed, it should not register a touch. The contact spring is threaded in or out of the tip to adjust for this distance. These specifications are tested at the start of each bout during competitions. During competitions, fencers are required to have a minimum of two weapons and two body wires in case of failure or breakage.

Sabre fencing

The sabre differs from the other modern fencing weapons, the épée and foil, in that it is possible to score with the edge of the blade; for this reason, sabreur movements and attacks are very fast. Like foil, sabre uses the convention of right-of-way to determine who acquires the touch.

Sabre was the last weapon in fencing to make the transition over to using electrical equipment. This occurred in 1988, 31 years after Foil and 52 years after Épée. In 2004, immediately following the Athens Summer Olympics, the timing for recording a touch was shortened from its previous setting dramatically altering the sport and method in which a touch is scored.

The cross-section of the sabre blade is Y- or V-shaped, unlike the quadrangular shape of the foil, but not as stiff as the épée. Adult (Size 5) blades are 88 cm in length. At the end of the blade, the point is folded over itself to form a "button", although no actual button exists. The bell guard of the sword is curved around the handle, giving the fencer hand protection. On electrical sabres, a socket for the body wire is found underneath the bell guard. A fastener known as a pommel is attached to the end of the sword to keep the bell guard and handle on. The handle of a sabre is normally a French grip, as most other grips are incompatible with the bell guard. The entire weapon is generally 105 cm long, and 500 g  in weight. It is shorter than the foil or épée, and lighter than the épée, making it easier to move swiftly and incisively. Many equate the sabre's blade to a matchstick, in that they are easy to snap but relatively cheap to replace.

Unlike the other two weapons, there is very little difference between an electric sabre and a steam or dry (non-electric) one. The blade itself is the same in steam and electric sabres, as there is no need for a blade wire or pressure-sensitive tip in an electric sabre. An electric sabre has a socket, which is generally a 2-prong or bayonet Foil socket with the two contacts shorted together.

The target area for sabre consists of the torso above the waist, as well as the arms and head (excluding the hands). When fencing with electric equipment, a manchette, or sabre cuff, is used in conjunction with the lamé and electrically conductive mask to ensure that the entire target area forms a single circuit.

Because touches can be scored using the edge of the blade, there is no need for a pressure sensitive head to be present on the end of the blade (thus having the button). When fencing "electric" (as opposed to "steam" or "dry") a current runs through the sabre blade. When the blade comes into contact with the lamé, the electrical mask, or the manchette, the current flows through the body cord and interacts with the scoring equipment.

The lockout time for sabre was originally 300 to 350 milliseconds (varying by the reliability of the machine used). In 2005, however, the FIE voted 51-33 to decrease the lockout time. They then proceeded to vote 50-32 to decrease it to the specified time of approximately 120 milliseconds. Both sabre and foil are now fenced “wirelessly” at major competitions where radio transmitters are used and no ground wires allowing fencers better movement.

Changing the lockout timing effectively changed the way sabre is fenced, perhaps equivalent to if a piece used in chess had a different movement pattern assigned to it - although the essential nature of the game would remain the same, the strategies for attack and defence would need to be rethought.

The timing change was initially greeted with a degree of controversy, as many fencers were accustomed to having the longer timings. This made the techniques, currently employed, vulnerable to fast stop-cuts (a hit made by the defender that lands whilst the attacker is still beginning their attack) or remises (a second attack made by the original attacker after the first has technically finished). It was commonly regarded that the shorter timings would only encourage poor technique and an 'attack only' mentality, negating much of the art of the sport.

Remises and stop-cuts would not normally score a point as a hit by the attacker would take priority. However the hit made with priority may arrive too late under the shorter timings to register and so the stop-cuts and remises would indeed score.

As a result of the narrower timings, the efficacy of attacks into preparation was increased, meaning that it was now more critical that the preparing fencer must already have begun an attack by the time the two fencers were in hitting distance of each other.

The techniques of how to parry and riposte have been extended. The solid parries, used extensively before the change of timings, would be supplemented by an additional step back by the defender to avoid the attacker remising (continuing to push their blade after their attack has technically done) or else the defence to be performed as a beat-attack, an extending arm that deflects the oncoming attack halfway through the extension before hitting the original attacker's target area.

With hindsight, the shorter timings seem to have encouraged a tightening and refinement of the original techniques with smaller, neater moves so that, on the whole, sabre became faster and more precise than it had ever been before.