Fencing is a combat sport that features sword fighting. It consists of three primary disciplines: foil, épée, and sabre (also spelled saber), each with its own blade and set of rules. Most competitive fencers specialise in one of these disciplines. The modern sport gained prominence near the end of the 19th century, evolving from historical European swordsmanship. The Italian school altered the historical European martial art of classical fencing, and the French school later refined that system. Scoring points in a fencing competition is done by making contact with the opponent with one's sword.
The 1904 Olympic Games featured a fourth discipline of fencing known as singlestick, but it was dropped after that year and is not a part of modern fencing. Competitive fencing was one of the first sports to be featured in the Olympics and, along with athletics, cycling, swimming, and gymnastics, has been featured in every modern Olympics.
Competitive fencing Governing body
Fencing is governed by the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (FIE), headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. The FIE is composed of 155 national federations, each of which is recognised by its state Olympic Committee as the sole representative of Olympic-style fencing in that country.
Rules
The FIE maintains the current rules used by major international events, including world cups, world championships and the Olympic Games. The FIE handles proposals to change the rules at an annual congress.
Bout scoring and duration In fencing, each bout (i.e. a match between two individuals or teams) is decided by either reaching a set number of hits or outscoring the opponent within a specified time limit, depending on the format of the competition.
Individual matches Pool bouts: In pool rounds, each bout is fenced to 5 hits or a single period of 3 minutes. If neither fencer has reached 5 hits when time expires, the bout ends and the higher-scoring fencer is declared the winner. If the score is tied, a tie is recorded. At the end of each bout, the number of hits scored by both fencers is also recorded.
Direct elimination bouts: In the knockout stage, each bout continues until one fencer scores 15 hits, or until the 9-minute total fencing time (split into three 3-minute periods) expires. A 1-minute break separates each period. The clock is paused whenever the action stops, such as after a valid hit. If the score is tied at the end of the third period, a 1-minute sudden-death overtime period is fenced. The first valid hit decides the winner; if no hit is scored, the fencer with priority (determined by a draw) wins.
Team matches Each team usually fields three fencers (plus a substitute). A match consists of nine consecutive bouts, with every fencer on one team facing each fencer on the opposing team in a preset rotation. Scoring is cumulative, generally progressing in increments of up to five hits per bout, until one team reaches 45 hits or time expires. If tied at the end of the final bout, a 1-minute sudden-death period is fenced; the first valid hit wins, or if no hit is scored, the team with priority (decided by a draw) wins.
Universities and schools
University students compete internationally at the World University Games. The United States holds two national-level university tournaments (the NCAA championship and the USACFC National Championships).USACFC Retrieved on 2012-05-16. The BUCS holds fencing tournaments in the United Kingdom. Many universities in Ontario, Canada have fencing teams that participate in an annual inter-university competition called the OUA Finals.
National fencing organisations have set up programmes to encourage more students to fence. Examples include the Regional Youth Circuit programUS Fencing Youth Development Website, Regional Youth Circuit . in the US and the Leon Paul Youth Development series in the UK.
The UK hosts two national competitions in which schools compete against each other directly: the Public Schools Fencing Championship, a competition only open to Independent Schools,Home :: Public Schools Fencing Championships . and the Scottish Secondary Schools Championships, open to all secondary schools in Scotland. It contains both teams and individual events and is highly anticipated. Schools organise matches directly against one another and school age pupils can compete individually in the British Youth Championships.
In recent years, attempts have been made to introduce fencing to a wider and younger audience, by using foam and plastic swords, which require much less protective equipment. This makes it much less expensive to provide classes, and thus easier to take fencing to a wider range of schools than traditionally has been the case. There is even a competition series in Scotland – the Plastic-and-Foam Fencing FunLeagueThe Plastic-and-Foam Fencing FunLeague website. – specifically for Primary and early Secondary school-age children using this equipment.
History
Fencing traces its roots to the development of swordsmanship for duels and self-defence. Described as "high-speed chess", each bout begins and ends with a salute. Good sportsmanship and honor are stressed at every level of training and competition.
The oldest surviving treatise on western fencing is the Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, also known as the Tower manuscript, written in present-day Germany, which discusses the usage of the arming sword together with the buckler. It was followed by a number of treatises, primarily from Germany and Italy, with the oldest surviving Italian treatise being Fior di Battaglia by Fiore dei Liberi, written . However, because they were written for the context of a knightly duel with a primary focus on archaic weapons such as the arming sword, longsword, or poleaxe, these older treatises do not really stand in continuity with modern fencing.
From the 16th century onward, the Italian school of fencing would be dominated by the Bolognese or Dardi-School of fencing, named after its founder, Filippo Dardi, a Bolognese fencing master and Professor of Geometry at the University of Bologna. Unlike the previous traditions, the Bolognese school would primarily focus on the sidesword being either used alone or in combination with a buckler, a cape, a parrying dagger, or dual-wielded with another sidesword, though some Bolognese masters, such as Achille Marozzo, would still cover the usage of the two-handed greatsword or spadone. The Bolognese school would eventually spread outside of Italy and lay the foundation for modern fencing, eclipsing both older Italian and German traditions. This was partially due to the German schools' focus on archaic weapons such as the longsword, but also due to a general decline in fencing within Germany.
The mechanics of modern fencing originated in the 18th century in an Italian school of fencing of the Renaissance, and under their influence, were improved by the French school of fencing.Fencing Online . Fencing.net. Retrieved on 2012-05-16.A History of Fencing . Library.thinkquest.org. Retrieved on 2012-05-16. The Spanish school of fencing stagnated and was replaced by the Italian and French schools.
Development into a sport The shift towards fencing as a sport rather than as military training happened from the mid-18th century, and was led by Domenico Angelo, who established a fencing academy, Angelo's School of Arms, in Carlisle House, Soho, London in 1763.F.H.W. Sheppard, ed. Survey of London volume 33 The Parish of St. Anne, Soho (north of Shaftesbury Avenue), London County Council, London: University of London, 1966, pp. 143–48, online at British History Online. There, he taught the aristocracy the fashionable art of swordsmanship. His school was run by three generations of his family and dominated the art of European fencing for almost a century.
He established the essential rules of posture and footwork that still govern modern sport fencing, although his attacking and parrying methods were still much different from current practice. Although he intended to prepare his students for real combat, he was the first fencing master to emphasise the health and sporting benefits of fencing more than its use as a killing art, particularly in his influential book L'École des armes (The School of Fencing), published in 1763.
Basic conventions were collated and set down during the 1880s by the French fencing master Camille Prévost. It was during this time that many officially recognised fencing associations began to appear in different parts of the world, such as the Amateur Fencers League of America was founded in 1891, the Amateur Fencing Association of Great Britain in 1902, and the Fédération Nationale des Sociétés d’Escrime et Salles d’Armes de France in 1906.
The first regularised fencing competition was held at the inaugural Grand Military Tournament and Assault at Arms in 1880, held at the Royal Agricultural Hall, in Islington in June. The Tournament featured a series of competitions between army officers and soldiers. Each bout was fought for five hits and the foils were pointed with black to aid the judges. The Amateur Gymnastic & Fencing Association drew up an official set of fencing regulations in 1896.
Fencing was part of the Olympic Games in the summer of 1896. Sabre events have been held at every Summer Olympics; foil events have been held at every Summer Olympics except 1908; épée events have been held at every Summer Olympics except in the summer of 1896 because of unknown reasons.
Starting with épée in 1933, side judges were replaced by the Laurent-Pagan electrical scoring apparatus,Alaux, Michel. Modern Fencing: Foil, Épée, and Sabre. Scribner's, 1975, p. 83. with an audible tone and a red or green light indicating when a touch landed. Foil was automated in 1956, sabre in 1988. The scoring box reduced the bias in judging, and permitted more accurate scoring of faster actions, lighter touches, and more touches to the back and flank than before.
Women's fencing
Women's fencing developed in parallel with men's fencing, albeit much less expansively. Having roots — much like men's fencing — in the Royal Armouries Ms. I.33 where a female fencer named Walpurgis is depicted, women's fencing discreetly continued throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, and was sometimes as the subject of mythologisation. The aforementioned Domenico Angelo also accepted female students, among whom were actresses from London theatres, and the Duchess of Queensbury. Following Angelo's example, other fencing schools soon opened to women, leading to the rise of many talented fencers, such as Jaguarina.
Competitive women's fencing developed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, with women's individual foil first introduced to the Olympics in the 1924 Paris Games. Women's team foil was introduced to the Olympics in the 1960 Rome Games, but had been practiced extensively beforehand in the fencing world championships since 1932. Women continued for a time to be restricted from the so-called "advanced weapons" (épée and sabre) as they were considered too dangerous, but these too were soon included in the Olympics in 1996 and 2004 respectively. The introduction of women's sabre in 2004 forced the introduction of a rotation of team events, due to the International Olympic Comittee's maximum quota of 10 events for fencing. The IOC eventually changed their ruling on this, and the 2020 Olympics were the first to include all fencing events.
Weapons Each of the three weapons in fencing has its own rules and strategies.
Foil