Officiating Other Sports??

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

The tin foil event? Was it sponsored by Reynolds Aluminum?

Seriously though, I would be curious what type of officiating is done at fencing bouts. Is it done like boxing, where "judges" determine there is a point scored for each proper blow landed? Isn't a lot of that done electronically now?

I can't say how it's done now as I'm far removed from the sport, but back then you were basically judging who had the "right of way". The way it was explained to me was that there are four possible outcomes in a fencing bout:

• I'm alive and laughing over your bleeding corpse
• I'm alive but you're alive too
• You're dead but I'm dead too
• I'm dead and you're laughing over my bleeding corpse

To maximize the first two and minimize the second two outcomes they came up with the concept of "right of way". That means that once I begin my attack (can be extending the blade to the opponent, beating the opponent's blade aside to get it out of the way, etc - think of it as the habitual shooting motion in that once it starts you know what's coming next) the opponent has to defend themself first by either retreating, parrying, or otherwise letting the attack end. Once that attack "action" has ended the defender then can begin his own action (riposte) or wait to receive a second attack.

Judges interpret the movements of the fencers and determine in the case of a double touch (two lights coming on the machine you mention) who, if anyone, had the "right of way" and if there were single, compound, or multiple actions taking place.

A typical explanation may be something like "There was an attack from my left, a parry/riposte from my right, followed by a continuation of the initial attack from my left". In this example the point would be awarded to the right since they took the right of way from the initial attacker with a parry, then attacked themselves (riposte) without the initial attacker defending themselves.

You could also get into things like "stop thrusts" which are an attempt to jab an attacker (who has the right of way) before they get a chance to land their attack in time.

The machines help but you still need someone to interpret the action. Saber fencing was a hoot before they wussyfied it with electronics. You used to have head judge and two judges behind each fencer (total of 5). You'd wack someone and, if you had a really nice flexible blade, would achieve a nice loud "Thwack" that caused welts like you've been tortured (just think, before the advent of masks folks used to do this with no headgear - dueling scars were thought to be very macho). The head judge would call a halt when they think a blow was landed, describe the action, then poll the judges. There was some acting involved if you really got nailed but didn't show any reaction, trying to make the judges think the attack didn't really hit. If the point wasn't awarded you could then yell out in pain (you could also yell out if the point was awarded but you got more cool points if you could bluff them).

Fun stuff but it did a number on my knees (the actual fencing, not judging).