Men's sabre team

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Although Keeth may have been in some form of a metal block, I still think his decision is much more informed than any other one people are giving after they found out that it didn't work. For some reason I'm going to go with the Olympian on this one.

[Mihail]

No one is trying to take credit away from any achievements, but to deny that it's possible for someone on the sidelines to analyze the bout better than the fencer is to undermine the whole premise of coaching.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Agreed, but it has to be done on a certain level. I can go to my high school's football game and second guess the head coach on whether he should have thrown on short pass or run the ball on 3 and 5. But I can't go to the Pats v. Bills and try to take apart Bellicheck's defense. The same can be said for many people here. Just as you can say you may be able to second guess a fencer in your division, but to try and second guess Smaart during the Olympics at 44-44 is a bit far reaching. Furhermore, Smaart did what Bukantz wrote about in his artciel in American Fencing, using the "Cliff Bayer approach". So if the Captain of the US team backs that type of action, along with the fencer himself, I'm going to stick with it.

Finally, this is not undermining the premise of coaching, this is undermining the premise of second guessing.

[swordsen]

Second guessing maybe, but I am basing what I say on what I do as a coach. If it were my student up there I would have told him to stop doing that.
Whether or not he listened to me is a whole other issue.