Somehow, Fencing Just Isn’t What It Used to Be : It Lost Its Point When It Became an Electronic Sport, but Competitors Have to Be Sharp

The lights stopped flashing, the buzzers stopped sounding and for a moment there was a lull in the fencing at the Harvard School gym in North Hollywood.

The numbing reality of torn tissue in Nat Cohen’s left hamstring wouldn’t go away, though, and he sought out an ice bag for his swollen leg.

Forget Errol Flynn and the Three Musketeers. There was no swashbuckling at the Southern California foil tournament last weekend, one of several circuit events that determine U.S. national team berths.

The electronic gizmos that do the scoring, their low-pitched whine signaling a touch, destroyed romantic lore.

So, too, did Cohen contribute to the ruin of cinematic images, gratefully accepting an enormous ice pack and limping toward the relative comfort of the nearby bleachers.

No matter, even without the Hollywood image, fencers and fencing get along just fine. They are just regular guys, except that their favorite sport has evolved from mortal combat, in which men tried to stab one another.

Among the eight fencers who advanced from a field of 106 and into the final round Sunday, there were two financial analysts, a French professor, a student and a French-Canadian from Montreal, who said “Oo, la, la” after scoring against his opponent. Really.

The first thing you notice at a fencing tournament are the wires, extending from an odd-looking scorer’s table situated at the midway point of the strip, a 6 x 40-foot combat zone in which the fencers duel.

The table has two poles at the front, decorated with scoring lights. At the top are a green light on one and a red one on the other.

A touch of a fencer’s foil on the vest triggers a light and sound show from the scorer’s table. The first fencer who touches his foil to his opponent’s chest 10 times wins the bout.

The fencers are rigged for both sound and light. Each wears a vest that is attached to a long wire that extends behind him to a box feeding out the wire. Another wire leads from the box to the table and the lights.

The vest, padded but still light in weight, also protects the fencer, and the foil tips are covered with special protectors to prevent accidental stabbings.

Altogether, it’s anything but medieval. The fencers, in their stark white uniforms with gray vest and black-screened mask, look like guys who got stuck cleaning up after a nuclear accident.

Cohen, a 23-year old Yale graduate from New York City, hurt his hamstring in mid-action in the second round, but fenced on, hoping to win. He did not. “I was over-compensating for a hurt ankle,” Cohen said. “It was risky coming out here, but I have a chance to qualify for the World University Games.”

Cohen has gotten accustomed to certain risks when fencing.

Once, when he was in high school, he was struck in the eye by an opponents’ foil.

It blinded him in that eye, he said.

“I was taking off my mask and (his opponent’s foil) came up and hit me in the eye accidentally.

“So this (the sore hamstring) is a minor injury. The eye accident was one of those things you have no control over. It was in the act-of-God department.”

The guy from Merrill Lynch was in dire straits. Michael Marx was killing him, so to speak, five touches to none, in the championship bout Sunday. Peter Lewison, a 25-year-old financial analyst, was just not as quick as Marx.

Marx, a soft-spoken 28-year-old, is the top-ranked U.S. foil fencer and has been for the last seven years. Marx made the 1980 and 1984 Olympic foil teams and is a good bet again for 1988.

He is from Portland, Ore., but the lack of quality competition there prompted him to move to New York, a hotbed of American fencing, if there is such a thing.

He attends Hunter College and is trying for a degree in physical education. He hasn’t spent a weekend at home in more than a month, traveling from city to city for competition.

Said Marx: “ . . . Paris, Philadelphia last week, and this week, ummmm, uh, where am I? Oh yeah, Los Angeles. Then it’s Florida and Paris again after that.

“I’m 28 now and I’m thinking, hmmm, shouldn’t I be thinking about settling down. But until 1988, that’s not a possibility.”

There are sacrifices to be made to reach the top.

“About 98% of us (fencers) shouldn’t make those sacrifices,” said Eric Rosenberg of Marx’s devotion. “We’re not talented enough to warrant that obsession. When it’s all over and done you don’t have a job, don’t have a career and may not even have an education. In good conscience, I can’t tell a young fencer that it’s worth it.”

Maybe Lewison should have listened when he was younger. In the final, Marx was too much for him, though Lewison eventually closed the gap. Marx won the title, 10-7, and the four-inch trophy that went with it.

Marx also earned points for finishing in the top 24. So did Lewison and Cohen, too. The points determine placement on the U.S. national team. The more points, the better chance of qualifying for international competition as well as the National Sports Festival.

For Cohen, it was back to work Monday after a 5 1/2-hour red-eye flight Sunday night back to New York.

Lewison was back at Merrill Lynch Monday, too. Likewise, Marx, yet another championship won, was back in the classroom at Hunter College.

But not for long. For the top-ranked fencers, there is another circuit event at the end of March.

Say, did the Three Musketeers ever get in on a frequent flyer deal?