Lately, I have been thinking about the Olympics. Perhaps it is a continuation of the triumphant afterglow of the games in Vancouver, in which Canada led the gold medal count for the first time, or perhaps it is all the signs around Greenwich telling us how wonderful it is going to be to be an Olympic venue.
In any case, the Olympics are certainly on my mind.
Since moving to London, I have been at a fencing club that practices only foil. As a foilist, this is fine by me — it maximizes the potential group of training partners in the space, and all that. On moving to Greenwich, I discovered that there is also a local fencing club which meets on Tuesday night — which happens to be an evening in which my normal club does not practice. This club is a three weapon club, and I found myself itching to pick up an epee (no sabre fencers were out) for the first time in four years.
Prior to becoming an ex-pat, I had only ever been at three weapon clubs. Hardly a week would go by in which I would not do a little bit of sabre or epee to complement my foil fencing. I would coach and referee in all three weapons, to some extent. I am not — and never have been — in danger of morphing into the world’s greatest foilist. The fencing I do is for the enjoyment I derive from it. Whether it is beneficial to my fencing or not, picking up a different weapon is quite an enjoyable activity. It is also something that I had sadly forgotten about.
Back to the Olympics.

Vezzali wins Olympic gold
The Olympic Games have champions, and some champions are deemed to be greater than others. In recent history, for example, no fencer can be thought to be a more successful Olympian than Valentina Vezzali, with five gold medals a silver and a bronze over the 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 games. With individual women’s foil events in each games, and team events in three of the four, she has won the maximum number of medals available to her, the vast majority of them gold.
Yet she is considered less of a champion than the Michael Phelpses and the Carl Lewises of the world. Phelps has only gone to two Olympics, but has eclipsed Vezzali’s total in 2008 alone. Of course, Phelps and Lewis have advantages. Phelps won his medals over eight separate events, Lewis over four different events. A fencer, by comparison, has (at most) two events in which to prove him or herself over the course of an Olympic games.
This was not always the case. Nedo Nadi won five gold medals in 1920 — all three team gold medals, plus the foil and sabre individuals. Edoardo Mangiarotti won thirteen medals (six gold) over five Olympics in foil and epee — and his total would likely have been higher if World War II did not occur during what would have likely been his peak years.

Mangiarotti
But following Mangiarotti’s last Olympic medals in the 1960 Olympics, there is only one more instance of a fencer receiving medals in multiple weapons — Smirnov in 1980. So what happened? I had believed that a rule was introduced which banned fencing in multiple weapons. But I cannot find one on the books, nor can I find evidence via Google — so I am forced to conclude that I was mistaken and look for other causes.
I found two.
First, the talent pool got deeper. If you look at Olympic medalists from 1896 to 1960 a pattern emerges — France and Italy win the vast majority of the foil and epee medals; Hungary and Italy the sabre medals. There are occasional interlopers — individual fencers from other countries who can manage to break into the ranks of the elite — but if you were not French, Italian or Hungarian, it seems unlikely that you would possess the pedigree to become an Olympic medalist.
In 1960, things start to change. The foil event was won by Viktor Zhdanovich, a Soviet — the first time somebody who was not Italian or French won the event since 1904, and only the second time such a thing had happened. Epee was won by an Italian, but the British and Soviets each earned their first-ever Olympic medals in epee.
Since then, Italy has still managed to be the most competitive country at foil, and France at epee, but all three weapons stopped being two-horse races, and Olympic fencing has changed from a competition between three countries to a competition between Europeans, and finally to a global competition in which it is normal to see non-European fencers walk away with medals.
Still, with the rule changes that have been made in recent years, one can see that modern fencers have not lost the ability to adapt. Much like Christian D’Oriola — an Olympic champion at foil, and French national champion at sabre — managed the change to electric foil fencing in the 1950s, fencers like Vezzali have proven that they can handle changes in the manner in which hits need to be delivered (with the 2005 timing changes) and how points are called (with the introduction of video review). While her style might not translate well to sabre, it is not a stretch of the imagination to think that — had it been perceived as an option — Vezzali might have some Olympic medals in epee to go along with her seven foil medals, and might have already joined the other women on this list as one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
That said, even if an athlete could handle the combined depth of field amongst her peers and the divergence in style amongst two or three weapons, she would still inevitably run up against the second barrier that I discovered: Scheduling conflicts.
While the gymnasts, swimmers and runners of the world can count on having multiple event types at each competition, at the world level competitions are required by the FIE to be limited in scope to three of the six sex/weapon combinations. For organisers, this makes it easier to arrange for two of those to be in the same weapon, rather than three of them being for the same sex.
On top of this, the circuit for one weapon is eight events — six world cups, a zonal event and a world championship. The six world cups occur within a five month period, and fencers must attend competitions from various continents in order to maximize their results. To be at the top of the world rankings in two weapons, this would require twelve events over five months. Three would mean 18 competitions over 22 weeks all over the world. Exhaustion would set in if they could not combine multiple events into a single competition event, as occurs in other sports.
Besides this, the FIE sets aside a particular weekend in each month to be the designated “women’s event” weekend (and another for men’s events). As few competitions are even two-weapon competitions, scheduling a calendar that is competitive in more than one weapon ranks between difficult and impossible.

Nadi fences his brother, Aldo, in 1935
Unless the culture of fencing as it relates to multiple weapon fencers changes, such that it is a consideration for those constructing the schedule, Smirnov will likely be the last to medal in multiple weapons at an Olympics, Magiarotti will certainly be the last multi-discipline champion, and Nadi’s record of five fencing medals in a single games will never be under threat.
Moreover, fencing will always lack a singular face that dominates the sport. We will not have our Michael Phelps, our Usain Bolt, or our Michael Jordan. Our champions will only ever have one third of the pie, and no matter how dominant they are on their path to victory, there are two other champions that they must share the podium with.
I cannot help but think that this is a sad thing. News organisations covering the Olympics will happily lose all perspective when following an individual who is setting a record for medals at a single games, or total career medals. And I would love to sit down and watch that being done for a fencer.
This won’t happen when I watch in 2012. And it probably will never happen again.
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