Competitions
Competitions
Victor Harder Hessel wins gold at the Swordfish Sabre Final, 2019
There are many events across the world. Each often contain many competitions in several weapons, but they also have workshops and classes. So whether you go to compete or learn you can do both.
The largest event is called Swordfish, and was last held in Sweden. Here Victor Harder Hessel brought a gold medal back home to Denmark for his performance in the sabre competition.
Rules
Swordfish Sabre Tournament.
Judges in white and black raise a flag, blue or red, depending on who was hit and where.
The rules are few.
Hit the opponent without getting hit.
Take good care of your training partner — there is a day after the fight too.
It’s not enough to win the fight, you need to survive it too. Impaling the opponent is no good if you’re missing a leg at the end of it.
You can get close and grab the opponent’s sword arm, push it away or pull their weapon out of their hand if you can.
There are no rules for movement like in Olympic Fencing. You can go sideways, circle the opponent, criss-cross your legs every which way you please. For competitions (pictured here) the fencing area is often very large and forcing opponent’s out of the ring is rarely used. The focus is on the fencing.
Scoring
When you are hit you simply admit it and indicate where. But any hit won’t do. If the blow was weak, hit with the flat of the blade or only skimmed you then we do not count it and the fight continues without pause.
The fight doesn’t stop the instant someone is hit. When a fencer is hit their opponent has a brief chance to hit back and score still. This is to ensure each fencer attacks in a way that is also defensible afterwards. Our aim is realism so you must survive the fight, had the weapons been real.
In friendly sparring we simply tell each other if a hit was valid.
At competitions there are 4 judges who surround the fencers. Each fencer has a ribbon (blue or red) tied to their arm. The judges report if a hit was valid by raising a coloured flag (also blue or red). There are no electrical scoring mechanisms.
Points given depend on what target was hit. Head and torso is worth 3 while hands, arms and legs give 1.
If Fencer A hits Fencer B in the head, but also get cut in their arm then Fencer A gets 2 points (3 - 1 = 2). Fencer B gets no points. If both fencers hit each others arm or leg then neither gets any points (1 - 1 = 0).
Old vs. New
HEMA is very different from Modern Olympic Fencing, but if you come from that world you will find that most of your skills transfer nicely, especially to the rapier.