LOOKING SHARP
Area fencers test mettle in competition in Brooklyn
HORRIFIC, piercing screeches filled the Grand Ballroom of the New York Marriott in Brooklyn on Saturday. Women lunged at women. Men lunged at men.
No worries. This was just a hectic athletic competition, the Absolute Fencing Sabre Grand Prix, and these were preliminary rounds leading to the semis and finals Sunday at Grand Prospect Hall. Fencing is an international sport, and there are 45 countries represented at this weekend event. But it’s also very much a New York area specialty, more so than any other Olympic sport.
“The reason is you have the universities here, like NYU and Columbia, and then you have the clubs,” said Peter Westbrook, chief fencing guru with his Westbrook Foundation in Manhattan, which caters to inner city kids. “Every one of our classes has 150 people and there are 150 more on our wait list.”
The top-ranked athletes at the Grand Prix received byes Saturday into the round of 64 on Sunday, but that still left most of the 300-plus fencers competing on the 12 strips squeezed into the big room. There wasn’t much room for maneuvering, as blades flashed near spectator seating. The screams are a big part of the sport, because it isn’t always clear who has touched whom first — anywhere above the waist is fair game — and fencers are trying to sell the point to referees.
Ibtihaj Muhammad, a world champion in team sabre from Maplewood, N.J., says the yelling plays a small, but important role, in the discipline.
“Some of it is very subjective,” Muhammad said. “Even my parents have trouble understanding it. You have to believe the touch is yours.”
Muhammad began fencing at age 12 with coach Frank Mustilli after watching classes in the cafeteria of Columbia High School. She started in epee, then was attracted to the more athletic sabre events. She attended Duke on a scholarship and became the first Muslim woman to represent the U.S. in a fencing event. Muhammad, 29, is a favorite to gain one of the four sabre spots on the American team and go to Rio for the 2018 Olympics.
“Sabre fits my personality a little more than epee,” said Muhammad, who wears a scarf over her hair while competing. “It’s a little more aggressive.”
Because of that aggression, Muhammad occasionally breaks her $25 sabre blade. The last one was snapped against a pillar, after a particularly frustrating encounter.
Westbrook calls sabre “the 100-meter dash of fencing” because there is a lot of running about, a lot of action on the strip, or piste. There was much of that Saturday, along with the theatrics. Muhammad had a bye into the Sunday rounds, but she was in the ballroom to watch her sister, Faizah, 22.
“Watching her is more nerve-racking than when I’m competing,” Ibtihaj said. “I look like I’m going to pass out.”
Ibtihaj stood nervously by the strip as Faizah won her qualifying match, 15-5, advancing to Sunday, still following in her older sister’s footsteps.
“My sister was fencing and my mom told me I had to do it, too,” Faizah said. “But it’s worked out.”
The Grand Prix event will return to New York next year, although the exact venues are not certain. Donald Anthony, president of USA Fencing, is a Brooklyn product and Princeton alum who said this crowded, cacophonous event was like a homecoming.
“It’s a little tight, and it’s extremely expensive, because it’s New York,” Anthony said. “But everyone is so happy because they’re here. This is the center of fencing, the center of men’s sabre fencing for sure.”