Sword Sisters: Women’s Olympic Fencing
Who are the women who have made one of the most ancient practices become an exciting Olympic sport?
Sword fighting has been around since nearly the beginning of time since swords were some of the first weapons to be made in ancient times. Even before the tales of pirates swashbuckling the seven seas, sword fighting has been documented in ancient cave-dwelling carvings and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest feminist icons, Joan of Arc, donned a steel sword during her conquests. The Olympics organization acknowledges the first ancient telling of fencing to be from 1190BC based on cave dwellings in an ancient temple. However, you can easily imagine that the rules were quite different back then, even if they were fighting for sport. They did not use armour back then, which meant the only way you won a bout was through your competitor conceding, and with that being a form of dishonour to your opponent, many matches ended in death. Now, this was highly unregulated and was more of a way for people to settle the score with one another.
The true birth of fencing can be drawn back to Italy and Germany. These countries began to incorporate it into their military training rather than just killing each other outright. Since they were using it to train each other rather than settle disputes, there were much fewer deaths, and it made the soldiers much better in battle. After these warriors’ time in the military, if they survived, they found that they missed the action of battle and decided to use their training and turn it into a full-on sport. This was truly when fencing began with one of the first fencing clubs, or guilds as they called it back then, created in the fifteenth century, more specifically 1478, meaning that fencing is genuinely one of the oldest sports in the world. However, the equipment and official rules of the sport were still lacking quite a bit at this time.
It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the rules you see today were starting to form. Three main rules were created at this time, the first being a wire-mesh face mask. This mask is standard today, but it was a completely new innovation back then. It was at this time that the “foil” or standard fencing sword today was first created, which made fencing a much safer sport to compete in. The rules of where you could hit or touch your competitor were created at this time as well, which made the sport even safer. Since the sport was much safer, it became much more popular and resulted in many more clubs being built in Europe.
With the rising popularity and the start of the modern Olympic Games, fencing fit into the timeline perfectly. The timeline was so perfect that fencing was included for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, and it has been a part of the Olympics ever since. Now, this was only for men at the time, and there was only one category that athletes could compete in at the time, and that was foil, but that would not hold for long. The Olympic Committee was quick to add the categories of epee and sabre as well. For those who do not know, the differences in these categories are dependent on the type of sword that is used. A foil is the lightest sword, and it is designed for thrusting; you are only allowed to hit your opponent in the chest and not hit them twice in this category. In the epee category, the competitors use a heavy thrusting weapon and can hit their opponent anywhere on their body and hit them twice. Finally, the sabre category is a mixture of these two types of swords, and competitors can hit their opponents anywhere besides the hands and back of their heads, but double touches are still not allowed.
When it comes to women competing in fencing on the Olympic stage, this first took place in 1924 when the games were held in Paris. Although this seems early in the grand timeline of things, women were only limited to compete in the foil category despite the other two being available for men to compete in since the early 1900s. This goes to show the disparity that has occurred between men and women’s fencing in Olympic history. Women were not allowed to compete in the epee level on the Olympic stage until 1996, and the sabre was first introduced to women in 2004, which, ironically, the Olympics were held in Athens that year, where fencing first became a part of the Olympics.
It would not be fair if we wrote an article about women’s Olympic history of fencing without talking about some outstanding women fencers. Jujie Luan paved a path for women fencers in China. What made Luan an excellent example for the world was her longevity in the sport. She first started her Olympic career in 1984, where she started off with a bang. In her first appearance on the international stage, she won a gold medal, making it China’s first fencing Olympic gold medal in the country’s history. She eventually moved to Canada, but when it comes to her longevity in the sport, she is truly unmatched. Her final Olympic Games were in 2008, twenty-four years after her initial debut. She was still competing in the Olympics at the age of fifty. This is almost unheard of in the Olympics, and it goes to show how dominant and great of a fencer she was throughout her entire career.
Jujie Luan was an amazing example of longevity in fencing but not necessarily the best example at winning in the sport. If we want to talk about absolute dominance on the Olympic level, then we need to talk about Valentina Vezzali. As you may be able to guess by the name, she is a fencer who calls Italy home. Before we talk about her Olympic dominance specifically, she has more world cup wins than any other fencer in the world, with a total of thirteen gold medals, six of which have come as an individual and seven as a team. If this is what she accomplished on the international level, then imagine what her Olympic career looked like. Well, Vezzali has won a total of six Olympic gold medals, and she is one of the only athletes who has ever won five medals in the same individual event. This means she was dominant in the sport for twenty years since the summer Olympics are four years apart. Even having a child did not stop her because less than a year afterwards, she won yet another world championship. Now, she has not been able to continue her fencing career until she was fifty years old like Luan, but instead, she has taken her talents to the political world by serving in the Italian Parliament.
Another dominant women fencer is Laura Flessel-Colovic, who is a French athlete. She does have some added controversy to her name, but we will begin with her fencing career rather than the controversy. She specifically specialized in the epee category and is a champion on both the international level and Olympic level. She has a total of twelve world championship medals with a total of five gold medals. Now, on the Olympic level, she has a total of five medals, two of which are gold, with one being silver and two bronze medals. She still holds the all-time Olympic record for France for being the woman with the most Olympic medals out of all the women in France. Now, time for the controversy. The year was 2002, and she popped positive for a routine doping test. This resulted in a three-month ban, which is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. She insists that the drug was given to her by a team doctor, however, and it was an over-the-counter drug in France. Since the rules are made on an international level, they are not aware of the over-the-counter drugs in each country and generally apply the rules for all nations. Despite this short ban, she did not let this instance hold her back, and after her ban was over, she went on to earn a silver Olympic medal later that year. The controversies of fencing are much less than that of women’s ice skating, that is for sure.
With this section of the article, we would like to begin shifting our eyes from the past and into the future with a look at the future of women’s fencing in the Olympics. One of the women with the most potential is Man Wai Vivian Kong, who is better known simply as Vivian Kong. She made her Olympic debut in 2016 but without much success, but she has since improved her skills since then. She won the world cup in 2019, which was the first one in her country’s history (Hong Kong). She is also currently the number one ranked woman in the world for the epee category of fencing. Especially with the Olympics being so close to her home, people have even higher expectations for her. Unfortunately, expectations were just as high for her way back in 2016 when she did not deliver, so we hope that she can come up big in these Olympic games.
Another woman to watch is Olga Kharlan from Ukraine, who is going after her first individual Olympic gold medal. As a part of Team Ukraine, she has walked away with a gold medal in the team event and a few other medals before. However, she has yet to perform well individually; either way, any Olympic medals are better than none. She has won on the international level before, but just not on the Olympic level. With a lot of potential from Kharlan, she is undoubtedly one of the people to keep an eye out for to win the gold medal in the upcoming Summer Olympics.
To recap, fencing first started with retired soldiers who looked to continue their training for fun. In later years, more and more safety was added, which made fencing only grow in popularity. It began to peak with the start of the modern Olympic Games, which included it for men. It was not until twenty years later that fencing would become an Olympic sport for women as well. Women were quick to show that they belonged in the sport with athletes like Jujie Luan and Laura Flessel-Colovic, who have proved to be quite dominant in the sport. These two individuals have proved to be winners year after year, whether they were twenty years old or fifty years old. With eyes towards the future, you should be looking out for Vivian Kong and Olga Kharlan in the upcoming Summer Olympics. These two young ladies are at the top of their game and can quite possibly be standing on top of the podium soon.
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