Mocek's fencing is close to the baseline standard: not short, not tall, not flicky, not tippy. He is well-rounded. Hooking up against a curiously restrained Guyart, he rapidly gives himself a 4-1 lead with long attacks and fast bladework, usually on the French side of the strip.
Guyart, in the early bout, is stiff and tightly bundled. His blade actions are crisp and his footwork is a model of precision, but he pulls his attacks when he needs distance, and undercommits when Mocek is open. As if embarrassed at being so tall, Guyart seems unwilling to showboat his tremendous reach and killer fleche, and he burns a lot of energy merely by holding himself back. At times he's fencing both the opponent and himself. This is tremendously tiring, and he is at the end of a long tournament. A more relaxed Guyart would have been better situated for the next bout -- Mocek turned out to be his warm-up for Cassara.
When Guyart finally "lets go," it's with running attacks and ripostes. Guyart knows he can sustain long, multi-action phrases, so he starts prolonging the action in order to force a favorable conclusion. He tenaciously refuses to let Mocek get away before a light is turned on. Closing to 5-4 Mocek, Guyart attacks, is parried, counter-parries and -- finding his opponent fleeing -- ripostes at a run... he is counter-counter parried by Mocek, and then counter-counter-counter parries with a riposte flick to the back.
More than once, Guyart runs in the middle of an action -- true confidence. But Mocek's marches are even more daring. With the video on 1/4 speed slow-motion, you can see Mocek comfortably stepping forward, while Guyart's repeated stop-hits vibrate 3 inches short of his chest. Here is a fencer who knows Decision Point. Mocek has no problem dealing with the Frenchman's reach and the numerous cobra-fast counter-time threats that Guyart can throw out during a full-strip retreat.
Mocek-Guyart (r) -- Mocek (left) shows great comfort with Guyart's tight, over-shortened distance.
Nor is Guyart immune to being tied up in Mocek's blade, even if Guyart can make a counter-counter-counter parry. Mocek's blade keeps Guyart sufficiently uncomfortable so that he keeps pulling his attacks. Guyart's killer fleche doesn't appear until 12-9 Mocek.
The most glorious touches are flicks over the shoulder, but those are few and they always appear as a last resort. Also impressive are some radical close-outs from Guyart into Mocek's preparations. Most of the points are scored conventionally with the point.
In the end, it's Guyart's pulled-hand attack which clinches the bout. Coming to terms with his height and reach, he begins to use a tall-people move: He attacks, pulls the hand so Mocek's parry doesn't connect, then extends from the hip to land on some extreme edge of Mocek's lamé. He's sufficiently long and fast enough that this does not cause him undue risk. During the final extensions of those attacks, the tip easily travels six feet or more. This is the fencing Guyart seemed to be resisting in the early bout. The moves are so comfortable and effective they might be licks from his junior days, which he's trying to leave behind but can't quite do without.
Sergui Tikhonov (RUS) vs Andrea Cassara (ITA)
Meanwhile, Italy's young cowboy, Andrea Cassara, takes on Sergeui Tikhonov of Russia. Cassara is big; hitting him would be about as challenging as punching a wall, except this wall punches back. Even while his long, relaxed gait crosses the strip, his arm is sweeping from the elbow in a disjoined tempo. Opponents can't look at his distance and say, "Ah! It's clear what I must do." He is complicated. Cassara's target looks easy to reach, but his hand is devastating. The information he conveys on strip is conflicting, which eventually paralyzes his opponents.
Tikhonov, unfortunately, also keeps a deep, elastic guard position. He is the sort of fencer who sits lower and lower when he gets excited. He needs an upset to get past Cassara, who is turning into one of the most unbeatable foilists of the decade. So, excited, Tikhonov sits lower and lower -- and Cassara barely has to reach to flick his back.
Tikhonov-Cassara -- Tikhonov (left) gets walked to death. Cassara is happiest when he doesn't have to change directions.
Towering over his opponents with his natural height and a shallow en garde, Cassara ignores front-facing target and executes 80's-style flicks to the deep back. (Tikhonov arches back in pain when Cassara nails his tailbone.) He is too big to match the tempo intricacies of his team-mates Sanzo and Vanni, and the most effective tool in his belt is a wall-of-threat, strip-crossing march. Thus, Cassara is most interesting because of what and how he will suffer under the timing-changes. What he enjoys about fencing may be stripped, or reduced, and he'll be left playing his (considerable) length to block-time opponents.
There are promising-looking holes in Cassara's fencing. He brings a lot to the director: He couldn't live without rule t.56.a.2. His footwork is penetrable (easily penetrable, if you're one of his team-mates fencing him in a final). Cassara is a sportscar hand on an SUV body... and what's more, he's not really ready to be on his own. He receives, and seems to need, move-by-move counsel from his off-strip coach. Based his simple joy in screaming after a flick, he seems ripe for psychological warfare, as if he might falter if he weren't able to make an affirmation-scream for half a period.
Tikhonov is not the best fencer to exploit all these tantalizing holes, but he works bravely and finds some unlikely solutions. He frustrates Cassara's flicks by closing distance with a high prime, his hand so high the tip seems to score on Cassara's collar bone. During a strong run, 10-9 Tikhonov, he discovers that all you need to hit Cassara is to attack, to warp through the Italian's sweeping blade and hit the target behind it. But then he forgets.
Tikhonov-Cassara -- Cassara (right) has a lightning hand.
The bout looks like another Cassara drubbing, but in fact Tikhonov brings the score to 14-14, fencing with nothing but a lot of gusto, a very strong middle-game, and an enthusiastic audience. Tikhonov finishes his night 50 places above his usual.
So which is it? Do the top elite fencers place so consistently in the world cups because they are head-and-shoulders above the rest of the fencers? Or are the competitive margins so thin that an elite fencer can nearly be upset by a lower-50s fencer?
The apparent answer is that the margins are thin, and any fencer has a fair chance of placing. Or, perhaps, any fencer can tank to a lesser one in the eliminations -- Guyart can be 34th one competition (Aqaba), and 1st the next (Paris). In this tournament, scores of 15-14 were the rule in the quarter- and semi-finals, for both men and women.
The consistently top-placing fencers don't have a vast edge in skill or technique. Instead, their edge is purely mental: Tournament after tournament, they score one more point than their opponents. Once is a fluke, twice or more is a message.
Brice Guyart (FRA) vs Andrea Cassara (ITA)
In the quarter and semi-finals, every men's bout was 15-14 (excepting Slawomir Mocek's 15-13 win against Italy's Marco Vannini).
Gold medal matches, however, have their own logic. The fencers unshoulder their day-long strategies. They relax their long-range competitive mindsets. All the prior encounters are mere lead-ups to the final, real match, which is where two competitors can finally maximize their fencing without any care for the future. The last bout is the tournament. So the St. Petersburg Foil Grand Prix is about how Guyart got smoked by Cassara, and how Guyart got mad and took it out on Cassara's team at the Olympics.
Guyart is tall (6'1"), but Cassara is taller by three inches, and has forty extra pounds of weight to generate more fright in his opponents. At 2-0 Cassara, Guyart has learned to fear (but never negate) Cassara's flick. Tikhonov felt severe back-pain during his bout against Cassara, and when Guyart doubles out, he, too, is left clenching his back in agony after a heavy flick. Meanwhile, Cassara gives a jolly bellow, "Yo yo yo!" as he happily lopes back to the guard line for the next attack. His off-screen coach confirms: "Molto benne!"
Guyart-Cassara -- Guyart's (left) pulled hand attack fails, leaving him open to an easy stroll from Cassara.
At 6-0 Cassara, the spectator starts to grow angry: When, oh when, will France learn how to confront a marching attack? 2003 World Cup: France's Sebastien Coutant was destroyed with a very unflattering score by Cassara's march. 2002 World Championships: Team France obliterated by marching Germans. The French answer to the march is to huddle down, and hope the opponent is aiming for someone else. It's not as effective as they seem to believe.
Guyart-Cassara -- Cassara's (right) other killer move is a quick remise.
But this is Brice Guyart, he will have a fix for his middle and end-game, which is when he really takes off. Cassara is a tremendous fencer, but he's not 6-0 material versus Guyart. Guyart is just a slow starter. So what will his solution be -- to stretch further? To unleash his devastating fleche? 45 seconds into the first period, Guyart finds his end-game: The hand-on-hip attack. It somehow fails to elicit Cassara's devastating stop-hit. Then Guyart lands a parry, delayed-riposte (hand from the hip again), which is somehow unanswered by Cassara's usually prescient remise. Then, finally the Guyart fleche, which should have shown even the most obstinately blind fencer the way to win. Guyart narrows to 5-8 with yet another attack.
But the rally ends when Cassara unleashes his own attack, a lanky march finished iwth a deliberate flick to the back: Here's what I have. Guyart may have been too tired to find inspiration -- his Mocek bout was more energy-draining than Cassara's Tikhonov bout, as Guyart was fencing tight as a drum, and Cassara in comparison seemed fresh from the masseur's table. Cassara may also merely be a bad fencer for Guyart: Guyart starts slow, and Cassara can't be stopped once he scents victory.
Guyart-Cassara -- Guyart (left) hints at the fleche he will produce later in the New York World Cup and the Olympics.
In a few months at the New York World Cup, Guyart will eviscerate Cassara's team-mate, Salvatore Sanzo, predominantly with the fleche. And then he'll beat Sanzo again at the Athens Olympic Games, after squeezing past Cassara 15-14. Guyart starts slow, but then he picks up speed.
The men's award ceremony, complete with traditional mu-mus.
