walked out

[Victor]

She *should* have asked the ref to address the audience. If he agreed it was a problem, the responsibility falls on him to fix it one way or another. ... If not, then, sure, she can walk out. (shrug) Her choice. And I could support a calm, dignified withdrawal, black card or not. But a huffy fit serves no good purpose. ... The bouts should have been allowed to contiue afterward. If other fencers agreed the crowd was too rowdy and the ref was unresponsive (or wimpy), they could have left as well. ... Lessons learned all around.

[Tireur]

Let her walk out, award her (in her absence) a black card and go on from there.

This is absolutley the correct thing to do. Crowd or no crowd

[deadly lefty]

Originally posted by veeco
You don't give up, ever. You try to do your best. Otherwise why compete?

I agree with you and If you let a crowd of people yelling at you get to your head that much to run out you need to focus and relax. up there on the Piste all that matters is you and the other fencer

[Masterurethane]

Hmm, sorry, I can't adopt this way of thinking. I would not want to be involved in a situation such as this. Being jeered at is not what fencing is about for me. I would not not tolerate it, and wouldn't expect it of anyone else. Though that would apparently make me an inferior fencer. Which I can cope with.

[deadly lefty]

well im not saying i would enjoy it!

[Tireur]

Though that would apparently make me an inferior fencer.

Doesn't say anything about you abilities as a fencer, just as a competitor. You have to put all that out of your mind and focus.

[lochinvar]

I, too, think edew has the proper response; however, I wouldn't stop at black carding the fencer. I believe it would have been proper to black card the 'coach' who behaved equally poorly.

Boo states the fencer in question was "unprofessional"--a curious choice of terms, I think, for a sport in which everyone is (theorectically) an amateur. Perhaps "immature" would be a better word...

However, the fact is we are all volunteers. Everyone fences for different reasons. Perhaps extremely disciplined competition is not what this person wanted or expected. Perhaps this competition was the defining moment for her. Who can say?

Perhaps the spectators were out of control, perhaps not. Crowds at sporting events--even amateur sporting events--tend to sink to a lower common denominator. (The aggregate IQ of, say, the crowd at a soccer match seems to be the IQ of the most intelligent person divided by the total number of spectators...). It may be that she just was having a bad paranoia day and just thought that everyone was getting on her case. If the former, then the ref should have done something. If the latter, then she needs to seriously re-evaluate whether competing is her 'thing'.

In any case, simply leaving the competition without withdrawing formally shows a serious lack of respect for the sport and her opponent and deserves the black card.

I think discipline also should be meted out to the official who tore up the score sheet, stopped the competition, and sent everyone home. That, too, shows a lack of respect equal to--or greater than--the actions of the fencer.

When the officials can't be counted on to act in a sportsmanlike manner, then we have truly descended into anarchy.

[Grey]

I think we should go more on the history of fencing and that such things were unheard of half a century ago. It depends on how you want to "place" fencing under. Sport or Swordsmanship. If sport, then that is completely fine. If Swordsmanship, then that is not fine at all.

[veeco]

Those things routinely happened half a century ago. Perhaps more than now. An example is the Junior world championships in Egypt in the 60s (IIRC). Two fencers, a French one and a Swedish one shared the gold medal, because of some technicality.

Read Nadi's books, you will also find plenty of examples where fencers pulled out of tournaments because of some unjust referee decision, etc.

Learn about Cerioni, who was one of the best foil fencers at the time, and how he used to mob his next opponent in the locker room so he would have an easy time fencing him next.

Things weren't so touchy feely back then as one might like to hear about.