Epee Ethics

[ReverseLunge]

You are fencing a person who uses a French grip and they are posting. Mid way into the bout you notice that they are cringing in pain everytime you beat their blade and after every point they have to stretch and rotate their wrist and make a fist to get the blood back into their hand. As the bout goes on you start to knock the sword out of their hand every other point and you can tell they are in serious pain. You continue to beat as hard as you can and do beat attacks until you win the bout. When the bout is over you see them sitting in the corner in a cold sweat and agony on their face, they have their hand in a bucket of ice.

Good or bad? Right or wrong? What would you do?

[noodle]

i'll try and win the bout not having to cause the guy pain.

but if he's whoopin me because of it, i'm going to use it. he's not in enough pain to not fence -- he feels he can carry on, so i'm not terribly worried. i mean, for all i know, the guy could be faking the pain to try and get me to lay off the beats.

i'm pretty sure this is the mentality of most fencers. we don't want to hurt anyone, but if someone has a weakness, they're going to find it and exploit it. this is also why if i ever get an injury of this kind, i'll drop out of a competition instead of pushing myself and risking real damage.

[Feltan]

RL,

That seems a bit of an extreme example, but I assume you are trying to investigate the ethics of the matter.

Given what you have written, I see nothing wrong with your actions. In this example you were fencing within the rules, and not doing anything that could remotely be considered as shenanigans.

Your opponent is in pain -- for whatever reason. Most fencers who have been around the block once or twice have had to fence with some pain. The question becomes: do I carry on or withdraw due to the pain? In this example, you opponent decided to carry on; that is fine, but remember your opponent always has the (honorable) option of withdraw due to injury or illness.

When your opponent gets on the strip in competition to fence, you are not obliged to "take it easy" on them because - for whatever reason - they are not at 100% effectiveness.

At a practice or friendly non-competitive bout I would have a different opinion.

Regards,
Feltan

[lefty_monster]

Now you know that if *you* had been showing a weakness, the other guy would have used it against you. So don't feel bad. Move on with your life. We've all had bad days and it was that guy's turn.

But after the bout, i probably would have said something like "you doing ok, man?" just to show that I'm not completely heartless...

[Welted 24/7]

Like noodle said, the guy obviously doesn't think he's so badly hurt that he can't continue, and you're not doing anything illegal. If it hurts so bad when he takes a beat...why is he sitting there and letting his blade get beaten?

This is opposed to that old thread where DFP thought it was perfectly alright to deliberately try to injure your opponent to win, I assume?

[Feraud]

I've had tendonitis once in my weapon hand (I use a pistol grip) and I figure if I used a French grip that's exactly what would happen.
In fact the story I've heard was that when the FIE considered banning the pistol for safety reasons, but allowed them for fencers with a medical condition, they were flooded by requests and gave up.

When I developed the condition I was fencing at a NAC and was in so much pain I couldn't release my hold on the weapon without prying my finger off the grip. But I didn't expect any quarter from my opponent.
Only 2-3 months without fencing allowed it to heal,

[broncofencer]

After a touch or too I might ask him if he was okay. Giving him the oppurtunity to make the call to go on or not one more time. I may even bring it to the directors attention "is he okay?". I know I have seen it in several sports where the competitive juices start flowing and people try to continue that shouldn't. If after that they still want to give it a go then I continue with my stratagies for the win.

The only other issue I have is if he is dropping the weapon every time I beat and getting the halt then I may ask the director to step in.

[RebelFencer]

I would continue to use it in a legal way. If he wasn't attack I might just get ahead and let time run out as to minimize it, but if I had to carry through doing it till the end of the bout I'd probably go up and ask if he/she was going to be ok or something.

[Inquartata]

There are ethics in epee?







But seriously, it's his choice to use the French grip. If he can't do it properly and can't deal with its weaknesses it's scarcely your problem...