The Care and Feeding of Spectators
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The Care and Feeding of Spectators
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Date
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December 1940
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5
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6
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7
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7
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Donald F. Barnes
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en
The Care and Feeding of Spectators
By DONALD BARNES
IT SEEMS HIGHLY UNLIKELY that fencing will ever become a great spectator sport. Twenty thousand people are never going to jam Madison Square Garden to see an epee bout (even a one-touch epee bout). But just on the off-chance that a spectator might wander into a salle during the course of a competition, there might be a movement set under way to cope with the situation.
When fencers are confronted with spectators, there seems to arise a general attitude of helplessness about making the casual onlooker feel at home or helping him to understand the rites that transpire during a competition. In fact, officials sometimes seem to go out of their way to make the whole thing as abstruse as possible.
On the surface of it, fencing appears to be a fine sport for the novice spectator, the person whose knowledge of swordplay stems mostly from undergraduate performances of Hamlet, Cyrano or Henry IV. You either hit or are hit and that's all there is to it, he thinks. Little does he know!
A series of cardinal rules seem to have been drawn up about the relationship of spectators to fencing, rules to which all competitions adhere religiously. Let's outline a few of them:
1. Identities of all fencers shall be carefully concealed. They shall have no distinguishing numbers and their names shall be announced once at the most during each bout. And even when names are announced, it shall never be mentioned which of the two competing fencers bears which name.
2. Scores of all bouts in progress shall be rigidly concealed. If the scorer goes so far as to give the current standing, he shall only say "Three-two," or whatever the count may be, without mentioning which of the competitors is ahead.
3. Under no conditions shall the relative won-and-lost standing of the fencers be revealed, unless the bout is obviously a fence-off for a medal. In addition, there must never be a scoreboard of any type. If there are two pools, there shall be no announcement of which competitors are fencing in which pools.
4. The technical phraseology of decisions during bouts shall never be explained. The ideal of such decisions is something like this: "Halt! Attack-takes-blade-envelopment-parried-riposte-parried-foul-counter-riposte-for-you-yes-for-you-foul-for-me-no-benefit-of-the-doubt-nothing-done-fence!" Any further explanation shall be looked on as callow.
5. Occasionally there shall be a ceremony known as "the debate." When a fencer does not agree with a director, or when judges and directors cannot agree, the debate shall be quiet and prolonged. In spite of the fact that the director's decision is always final and always prevails, there shall be no time-limit on any debate at any time.
There was a time, historians of competitive fencing tell us, when spectators were definitely unwelcome even at such events as National Championships. This attitude has long since been outmoded, but spectators receive less of a break today at a fencing competition than in almost any sport with the possible exception of underwater swimming contests. Simply because there are few spectators, there are few facilities for them. What seats there are are usually taken up by contestants or contestants' gear. And then, as we have already said, very little effort is made to acquaint the spectators—or even the fencers themselves, sometimes—with what is going on. There is practically no other sport known to mankind that goes its merry way without benefit of either scoreboard or public address system.
A recent occasion will serve as an example of how this works out. The final round of the 1940 foils championship had a good deal of drama in it. Warren Dow got out in front at the very start, and by the midway point had compiled what seemed to be an unbeatable lead. Then, with only three rounds of the round-robin to be fenced, Dernell Every and Norman Lewis began to creep up on him. A magnificent situation for a triple-tie developed. But did the spectators know about it? Not very many of them did.
Then came a bout that seemed to hold little interest: Mr. Dow, undefeated in six bouts, versus Nathaniel Lubell, who had won none of six bouts. It was fenced in comparative privacy, yet actually it was most important in deciding the championship. Who knew this? Only a few of those aficionados who had been keeping their own score-sheets.
It is logical that fencing will never become a great spectator sport, because the whole theory and action of fencing is so precise and so minute that it requires close and careful attention. But only a pretty hopeless pessimist would contend that it cannot attract a larger "gate" than it does now. There are many little ways which, since they would let the spectators in a little more on the secret of what's going on, might help to increase general interest and stimulate the same kind of amateur and casual attendance that makes up the bulk of the audience at almost any sports event. Here are a few of them:
Require all competitors to wear a number, which shall be keyed either to a printed program, a scoreboard, or a blackboard on which contestants' names are printed.
Require the scorer to announce the score of every bout—including competitors' names—after the scoring of every touch.
Require the announcement of standings of the fencers or the teams at frequent intervals—after every six bouts, say—during the course of a competition.
Request directors to be as explicit as possible in their discussion of a phrase d'armes so that spectators may understand the interpretations of the jury.
Try to speed up bouts and shorten intervals between bouts. Ban any and all arguments after a decision has been announced by the director.
If at all possible, provide a scoreboard for at least the final strip in each competition, showing the won-and-lost record of each competitor.
Maybe these ideas wouldn't increase attendance at fencing competitions at all. At any rate, they would do two other things, almost equally important: they would lend a dignity and coherence to important tournaments that are now almost totally lacking, and they would help the fencers themselves to understand what's going on.
