WF TEAM times out at 14-13...

[Cookeit]

Saw this video yesterday on fievideo's youtube channel.



As you will see (or can tell by the title of the video) the TEAM match times out at 14-13.

I know that women's foil bouts tend to time out... but really? 27 touches in 27+ minutes? Seriously?

[bbower]

Better than the men's epee 9-8 loss to Canada at zonals in 2007 that effectively kept them out of Beijing.

[edew]

ME 9-8 makes sense. WF 14-13 is the result of the draconian decision by Roch to change the debounce time and lock out time for "telegenic" reasons. Good jorb Mr. Roch.

[eac]

At some point you have to come to terms with the death of the horse, and therefore stop battering it.

[D'Art]

Even if the horse was Seabiscuit in relative terms, compared to the glue fatory reject we've been left with?

[edew]

I'm just saying that we reap what we sow. And in this particular case, it's very easy to revert back. Everyone would be happier. Recognize that the intent may have been noble, but it was wrong and it ruined a perfectly fine weapon sport.

[Craig]

Let's just hope this means that more videos are being encoded and uploaded.

[erooMynohtnA]

I'm just saying that we reap what we sow. And in this particular case, it's very easy to revert back. Everyone would be happier. Recognize that the intent may have been noble, but it was wrong and it ruined a perfectly fine weapon sport.

Are you talking about WF or foil at large? I would be happier fencing under the old timings, but I am much happier watching the newer MF. WF, no thanks.

[Gav]

Are you talking about WF or foil at large? I would be happier fencing under the old timings, but I am much happier watching the newer MF. WF, no thanks.

I was going to say pretty much this earlier. I seem to remember everyone complaining about WF back before the timing change anyway - just for different reasons.

[foibles]

Maybe it's The Vezalli Shimmy setups that are eating up all the time.

[edew]

Are you talking about WF or foil at large? I would be happier fencing under the old timings, but I am much happier watching the newer MF. WF, no thanks.

Certainly to a larger degree with WF because of the necessary chest protectors. But even so, to a degree with MF as well.

[eac]

It's not clear that everybody would be happier with changing back even WF, although probably more would be happy than with changing back MF. But we have enough threads arguing that particular point, so let's just refer to them.

To me the bigger deal is just that rule changes are generally annoying because they invalidate a lot of your previous training. Most people have by this point invested a fair bit of training and thought into the current system, and so it does not make sense to me to change things again; in almost any big rule change, the cost of the change to competitive fencers overall (all of whom by definition have kept up) is larger than any possible benefit.

For you, edew, that cost would be much smaller than for most fencers, since basically all of your training came before the last change, so you could just re-engage that and pretend the last several years never happened (which probably would be nice for other reasons as well).

[D'Art]

Surely anyone with a proper fencing education would have had the basics pretty much ingrained to them though? Even with changes as significant as timings ones, almost anyone with a good knowledge and understanding of the basics will adapt pretty quickly. It's far easier doing that than it is to become good at a different weapon, and plenty of people do that without complaint.

And for the record, I absolutely hate these foil timings.

[edew]

It's not clear that everybody would be happier with changing back even WF, although probably more would be happy than with changing back MF. But we have enough threads arguing that particular point, so let's just refer to them.

To me the bigger deal is just that rule changes are generally annoying because they invalidate a lot of your previous training. Most people have by this point invested a fair bit of training and thought into the current system, and so it does not make sense to me to change things again; in almost any big rule change, the cost of the change to competitive fencers overall (all of whom by definition have kept up) is larger than any possible benefit.

For you, edew, that cost would be much smaller than for most fencers, since basically all of your training came before the last change, so you could just re-engage that and pretend the last several years never happened (which probably would be nice for other reasons as well).

Zing!

But really, here are two main reasons that the change has been bad for foil. I'm sure they're not new. First is that you're taught to hit, but now, you have to consider whether that hit will score. How does that even relate to "traditional" or "classical" fencing concepts of killing someone? Bang, you hit the chest and nothing comes of it? What that? So you have to train to "hit nice" as opposed to hitting. It's becoming unnecessarily abstractified.

The second is that it has encouraged the disrepect for the Right of Way. Fencers are now trained to make remises. I have nothing against remises. Make too many of them myself, but every once in a while, it's deliberate and properly set up. But now, fencers are trained to make remises. Ok, they're deliberate. But they're relying on the fact that the riposte will skip off their twisting body or can't score soon enough to make within the lock-out time.

Essentially, as I've mentioned before, it's turning foil into epee. I like epee. But I fence epee because it's epee. I fence foil because it's foil, not because it's epee-light.

[eac]

The traditional/classical thing is retarded and you know it. Flicks are just as abstractified as having to hit the way you have to hit now. That argument was never in the building, so I can't even say it's out the window.

ROW respect is somewhat begging the question. The question is, is the game appreciably worse when there are certain things you can do effectively without ROW. My answer is no, and here's why. As I've said before, fencing is fundamentally different from basketball/soccer/American football/hockey. Those games can be said to be "offensive" if, when you have the ball and are trying to score, you score with high probability. Conversely, they can be said to be "defensive" if in that situation you score with low probability. By this definition, basketball is offensive, soccer and hockey are defensive, and football kind of varies. But, crucially, in those games, once you score, the other team almost always gets the ball back and its own attempt to score.

In fencing, if you are being offensive, and the nature of your flavor of fencing is such that you score with high probability, then everybody is trying to be offensive all the time, and a lot of the touch is decided by who gets to be "offensive." I submit that old-timings men's foil was this way. Conversely, if you are being offensive and the nature of your flavor is such that you score with low probability, nobody ever wants to be offensive, and the game is all about tricking people into being offensive and then blowing them up. I submit that current women's foil and epee are this way.

Because you don't "get the ball back" after the other person scores, fencing has this dynamic, and so I think it's important in these types of games to have an incentive to be offensive, but not have that incentive be too strong. And, I think in top-level MF at the moment, this is actually the closest to being balanced, on average, of any weapon/variant of fencing I've seen. It's true that there are bouts where people just bounce and stare, but there are also bouts (cf. Miles-Gerek) where people alternate between sprinting and screaming for a minute and a half and then the bout is over.

By this metric, it's true, current foil is closer to epee than old foil. But I don't think you can really watch Gerek/Miles/David fence and say that foil has turned into epee. I think part of the problem is that being properly offensive requires being kind of a ridiculous sprinter, and if as I suspect you're not, your bouts with other non-sprinters will be somewhat epee-like.

But the main point, which I think still stands, is that if you agree that foil is not redundant with epee (and honestly I don't really see how you could say that, at least about MF), the question is more about the cost of rule changes, which I maintain is ridiculously high.

[Gav]

This dicussion is getting old fast.

Like it or not these are the timings - deal with it. Was fencing better beforehand? Well I didn't mind it but then I don't mind the new timings either. I think the way foil is generally fenced now is - according to my tastes - aesthetically interesting. That's not to say that I didn't find the previous timing's foil interesting they are different and that is all. And please let's not starting talking about the flick that is a discussion that's tedious in the extreme.

Was women's foil better with the old timings? I don't think so. People complained about it back then too. The new environment is just different.

Deal with it.