Surprising number of Nantais at the Grand Palais for the men and women’s individual épée final. Our club’s entire women’s team was there. Not to mention assorted maîtres d’armes from the Grand Ouest. Chatted with DiMartino along the way and was happily surprised to run into Sebastian Dos Santos. I haven’t been following world-class épée in the past few years, but even among the athletes I was happy to see many people I know at least in passing. What should have been a big, intimidating hall (even for a spectator) felt more like an insanely good regional competition in some respects.

I came to watch closely and note what was going on tactically to the best of my limited ability. I only care about nationalities to the extent that they represent a school of thought in fencing. Since I fence in France, I probably have the best grip on the game they play here: aggressive, privileging penetration of the point over actions au fer. I still think this is the dominant game in épée, though in the past five years, the Italians notably have been developing countermeasures. Yep. Five years is a long time. If something was going to happen it would have already. I don’t think we’re going to see a revolution in épée for a long time. So, anyway, I came with my notebook, a camera (mostly useless), a new mechanical pencil, and a small pair of binoculars (to watch the coaching between periods).

I’ve tried many ways of noting fencing. You all know how hard this is. Well, my method was to begin on facing pages. The left page was for the fencer on the left, naturally. When a touch was scored, I noted the time remaining on the corresponding page and tried, as quickly as I might, to make some note of the action. I watched only one bout at a time. Thankfully, this was easy to do after the tableau 32, as all action took place on the five strips before the bleachers. I also noted whether the touch took place on one side or the other or in the middle. The immediate benefit of noting this way was that, at the pause, an approximate breakdown of touches is apparent and you needn’t rely on “feeling” or “instinct.” The fencing I most appreciate could be characterized as an analysis race between two fit and technically competent adversaries and notation adds to the appreciation of fencers who actually fence—which is not true for everyone who makes it into the semifinals, as we shall see.

So, over the next few days, I’ll go over the bouts I noted.