60 Fun Facts About Fencing

What are the three weapons of modern competitive fencing?

A fourth discipline appeared once at the 1904 Olympics and was never seen again.

Which fencing weapon allows hits anywhere on the body?

Because there is no off-target, épée also has no right-of-way rule and both fencers can score on a simultaneous hit.

In foil, which part of the body is the valid target?

Arms and legs are off-target; hitting them stops the action but scores nothing.

Which weapon scores with the edge of the blade as well as the point?

It is the only cutting weapon of the three, aimed at everything above a line drawn round the top of the hips.

What is the maximum weight of a foil?

The sabre shares the same limit, while the heavier épée may weigh up to 775 grams.

What is the maximum weight of an épée?

The extra heft, the stiff triangular blade and the big bell guard give it a reputation as the slowest of the three weapons.

Which rule decides who gets the point when both foil fencers hit at the same time?

The referee awards the touch to whoever held priority, typically the fencer who started the attack; épée has no such rule.

How many hits win a direct-elimination bout at the elite level?

Bouts run to 15 hits or nine minutes of fencing time in three periods; pool bouts are shorter, to five hits.

How many hits win a pool bout?

If neither fencer gets there in three minutes, the higher score wins and ties are recorded as ties.

What total does a team need to win a team match?

Three fencers a side rotate through nine bouts, each nominally adding five hits to the running score.

Where is the FIE, fencing's world governing body, headquartered?

It was founded in Paris in 1913 in the rooms of an automobile club, with a Belgian, Albert Feyerick, as first president.

In which year was the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime founded?

The nine founding nations included Bohemia and Norway; a French-Italian row over weapon grips had led to a French boycott of the 1912 Olympic fencing.

Which country's rules were adopted for sabre at the 1913 Ghent congress, while French rules governed foil?

Hungarian sabreurs went on to dominate the Olympic event for decades.

Which Russian oligarch was elected FIE president in 2008?

He beat incumbent René Roch by 66 votes to 61 and was re-elected three more times.

Fencing has been contested at every modern Olympics; which was the first?

Only athletics, cycling, swimming and gymnastics share that unbroken record.

Which fencing weapon has been contested at every single Summer Olympics without exception?

Foil was missing in 1908 and épée was absent from the 1896 Games for reasons nobody has explained.

What was the fourth fencing discipline held at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics and never again?

It used a wooden stick with a basket hilt and was dropped as soon as the Games left America.

In which year was women's foil first contested at the Olympics?

Women had to wait much longer for the other weapons: épée arrived in 1996 and sabre in 2000.

Women's sabre made its Olympic debut at which Games?

Épée and sabre had long been deemed unsuitable for women; women's épée arrived four years earlier in Atlanta.

Which weapon was the first to get electric scoring, in 1933?

Foil followed in 1956 and sabre not until 1988; the Laurent-Pagan box replaced side judges with a tone and a red or green light.

In which year was sabre finally converted to electric scoring?

The scoring box cut judging bias and let referees credit faster actions and touches to the back and flank.

Which fencer's death at the 1982 World Championships led to Kevlar being added to uniforms?

Kevlar degrades under ultraviolet light and chlorine, so newer fabrics such as Dyneema have since taken over.

What is the conductive over-jacket that lets the scoring box tell on-target from off-target hits called?

It covers the valid target so the scoring box can tell a good hit from an off-target one; épée fencers do not need one.

What is the underarm protector worn beneath a fencing jacket called?

It has no underarm seam, so there is no weak spot lining up with the jacket seam on the sword-arm side.

Traditionally, what colour is a fencer's uniform, and what colour is an instructor's?

The white may date from when weapon tips were dipped in soot or chalk so judges could see where hits landed.

What is the fencing strip called?

It is 14 metres long and 1.5 wide, with hash marks over the last two metres to warn fencers they are running out of room.

What happens if a fencer retreats off the end of the strip with both feet?

Leaving by the side is milder: the opponent gets to advance one metre before play resumes.

What is the full French command a referee uses to start a bout?

For two women, prêts becomes prêtes; 'Halte!' stops the action.

What is a riposte?

In the two priority weapons it also seizes right of way, which is why the parry-riposte is the classic scoring sequence.

What is a feint?

String one or more feints before a real attack and you have a compound attack, built to deceive the parry.

What is a flèche?

Crossing the feet is illegal in sabre, so sabreurs use a flying lunge nicknamed the flunge instead.

What is the 'flick' in foil and épée?

Timing changes that require the point to stay depressed longer have made it far harder to pull off.

What is an appel?

It is sometimes called a half-advance and can also be used, by stamping the back foot, to ask for the bout to stop.

What does a black card mean in fencing?

Even refusing to salute and shake hands after a bout can now earn one.

The sabre guard quinte, used to protect the head, is which in the numbered French sequence?

The parries take their names from French numbers: prime, seconde, tierce, quarte, quinte, sixte, septime and octave.

Which fencing master's 1763 Soho School of Arms first stressed fencing for health and sport?

His book L'École des armes appeared the same year, and his family ran the school for three generations.

The oldest surviving Western fencing treatise, Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, dates from about when?

Also called the Tower manuscript, it teaches the arming sword and buckler and was written in what is now Germany.

The earliest archaeological evidence of a fencing bout, from about 1190 BC, is in which country?

It appears on the wall of a temple, centuries before Homer described duelling heroes in the Iliad.

The 16th-century Bolognese fencing tradition is named after which geometry professor?

It focused on the sidesword used alone or with buckler, cape, dagger or a second sword, and eclipsed the German traditions.

The foil was invented in which country as a training weapon in the mid-18th century?

The name comes from the practice of wrapping or capping the point with a 'blossom', in French fleuret.

Which fencing style is practised only inside German academic fraternities as a ritual duel?

Bouts test courage and endurance rather than aim to harm, and once left the famous facial 'duelling scars'.

Which Hungarian sabreur, called the greatest Olympic swordsman ever, won gold at six Games?

Told he was too old for Rome 1960, he challenged the whole national sabre team to bouts and beat every one of them.

Which Italian holds the record of 39 Olympic and World Championship medals in fencing?

His father, a Milanese master, converted him from a natural right-hander into an awkward left-hander to build a champion.

Which Italian is the only fencer to win Olympic gold in all three weapons at a single Games?

He took five golds at Antwerp 1920, and his father had refused to teach him épée, calling it undisciplined.

Which Italian foilist won individual Olympic gold in 2000, 2004 and 2008, then became a minister?

She won 16 world titles and nine Olympic medals in all, and tried to qualify for Rio at 41.

Which Cuban, aged 16, won épée gold at Paris 1900, the first non-European Olympic fencing title?

In St. Louis four years later he won three golds in two days, one of them alongside an American under a mixed-team banner.

Which American became the first US woman to win Olympic fencing gold, in sabre in 2004?

Both her parents rowed for the US at the 1976 Olympics; she carried the flag at London 2012.

Which American foilist won individual gold at Tokyo 2020 and both individual and team gold in Paris 2024?

Raised in Versailles, Kentucky, she fenced for Notre Dame and married fellow Olympic fencer Gerek Meinhardt.

Which sabre fencer was the first American Olympian to compete in a hijab, in 2016?

Time named her among the 100 most influential people that year, and she is a bestselling author.

What is the maximum blade length of a sabre?

The point is folded over into a small 'button', and manufacturers must fix the blade horizontally 70 cm from the tip for flex tests.

What is the maximum blade length of a foil?

Blades are low-carbon or maraging steel and are built to bend on impact rather than break.

Which fencing weapon is the most commonly used?

It began life as a training weapon and is still the one most beginners pick up first.

The 2015 film The Fencer, nominated for a Golden Globe, was loosely based on which Estonian coach?

The Finnish-Estonian-German production competed for Best Foreign Language Film at the 73rd Golden Globes.

What was the first regularised fencing competition, held in Islington in June 1880?

Bouts went to five hits and the foil tips were blackened so judges could see the marks.

Which fencing event forms one of the five disciplines of modern pentathlon?

The Olympic sport also includes swimming, riding, shooting and running.

What force must FIE tournament clothing resist?

The mask bib must resist twice that, and the mesh itself must hold 25 kilograms.

Which sport-broadcasting stunt featured fencing with toy lightsabers in 2018?

ESPN2 acquired the rights to a selection of matches for its tongue-in-cheek programming block.

In which year was foil converted to electric scoring, between épée and sabre?

The Laurent-Pagan apparatus, with its tone and red or green light, reduced judging bias and caught lighter, faster touches.

What is the seated variant for able-bodied competitors, modelled on the Paralympic discipline, called?

Opponents set up facing chairs and fence without leaving their seats, mirroring the Paralympic discipline.

Fencing is often described with which two-word nickname comparing it to a board game?

Every bout begins and ends with a salute, and sportsmanship and honour are stressed at every level.