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Title
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The Remise
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Date
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June 1941
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volume
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6
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issue
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3
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pages
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3, 17
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content
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en
The Remise
The most important news that we can think about as June rolls around is the inability of Joe de Capriles to enter any of the competitions during the Gala Week this year. He is faced with a week of law examinations at that time. Last year he proved to be the war horse of the week, entering all six individual and team events. His presence was certainly felt for of his 62 total bouts during the week he won 41 and lost 21. He made 229 touches as compared to 172 touches received. He placed 2nd in sabre, 5th in epee and 7th in foil and carried his foil and epee teams to first place and his sabre team to second place. Such a man's presence in competition can scramble things about considerably and there is not doubt but that this year's championships would have different results were he able to bring his varied talents to bear.
Aside from his skill as a blade wielder, we shall miss him as one of fencing's best sportsmen. His good humor, consideration and apparent pleasure in fencing has won him considerable popularity. The girls even tell me that he is good looking. All in all, he will be missed and as a lawyer one of his first acts should be to draft a law against any possible repetition of this type of thing.
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Fencing is one of the strictest sports in America in regard to professionalism. As a result of unvarying and relentless attention to the actions of its amateurs, the Amateur Fencers League of America has gained the respect and admiration of all other amateur sports governing bodies in the country. To maintain such a position is not easy and at times forces the A. F. L. A. to take drastic action which may set unpleasantly upon the minds of those uninstructed in the facts.
There was the recent experience of the Ethyl Gasoline advertisement featuring four fencers in a supposed Calnan Memorial Three-Weapon Team Championship. Those posing in the photograph were recognized as A. F. L. A. members. To appear or permit your name to be used in any commercial advertising in connection with your sport is a breach of the A. A. U. amateur code, upon which the A. F. L. A. bases much of its amateur rules, only more so. After unsuccessful efforts to clarify the circumstances, the Board of Governors has now suspended all persons appearing in the photograph from A. F. L. A. membership for a period of 45 days. This by no means ends the matter. If these suspended members do not appeal for a hearing within this period, the suspension may very easily become permanent.
It is hoped that these fencers may prove their innocence of intent. However, we cannot fail to commend the Board of Governors upon its immediate action in the matter. In these days of acceptance of borderline amateurism in so many sports it is gratifying to see fencing carry on in the strictest interpretation of its beliefs. As a result, when fencers appear at A. A. U. or Olympic Association gatherings their word is their bond, as it should be.
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Dr. Herbert Sanborn, whose article appears in this issue, is a professional. He was listed as such in the Directory of Professionals published in December. His name was subsequently withdrawn from that listing upon the protestation of friends who stated correctly that he taught fencing without compensation and at an actual annual cost to himself. Dr. Sanborn has now presented his own case. He feels that he has acquired the professional spirit and attitude. He confesses to a professional standing in baseball years ago and the acceptance of a fee for a fencing lesson once. We salute his honesty, his good humored letter of correction and again reverse our verdict with the hope that his future professional fencing experience may not prove as costly to him as it has been in the past.
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Pieter Mijer, donor of the All-Eastern Outdoor Sabre Championship medals, scheduled for June 29th is one of fencing's unsung benefactors. It is about time that we sang a little song in his direction. He has been giving these medals for outdoor sabre competitions since 1928 at least. Maybe we missed it by a decade. This, despite the fact that the medals he wins for himself year after year are always in his favorite weapon, epee.
Pieter's medals have always been outstanding in selection and the present series, started about three years ago, deserve special mention. There is a good solid masculine massiveness about them for they compare in size to a silver dollar. However, they are neatly simple in design for they bear only an eagle with wings outspread, holding a small sabre in one claw. Nick Muray's sabre medal, described in an earlier issue, and Pieter's outdoor sabre medal make me wonder why I stick to foil. I might cop me off a valued bronze if I played my quarters right.
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It is too bad that we are unable to be more specific this early about the entries in the National Championships. We should like to print complete listings or even better the actual seedings and pools. These, however, are not available. The most colorful possibilities lie in the Army epee team threatening to appear via bomber from Fort McClellan, Alabama, and the trio of epeeists from Cuba. These two epee teams will prove no slouches.
The Army team will be led by Lieut. Col. Jean V. Grombach, second place winner in last year's Open Epee competition and member of the winning Washington Square Epee Team Competition for the past two years. To trace Jean's epee winnings back through the years would tax the records of even our magazine's files. Coming with him as a team from his 1st Battalion, 165th Infantry (Fighting Sixty-ninth) would be Captain Winslow Cornett, Commanding Company "D", formerly of the N. Y. Fencers Club where he was a member of the National Senior Epee Champion Team in 1937 and the National Junior Epee Champion Teams in 1937, 1938 and 1939; Sergeant K. O'Toohill, Company "A", former Sabre, Epee and Foil Champion of Ireland; Lieutenant Herman Lutz who participated in the National Junior Epee Championships in 1930, and Private Ralph Haberle, Company "D", formerly of the N. Y. Fencers Club.
The Cuban Team will be made up of Eugenio Garate, Carlos Lamar and Eugenio Sardina, the same trio which proved so popular in last year's championship and won second place only one victory behind the winning Salle Santelli team. In last year's individual epee championships Sardina placed 4th and Lamar 6th.
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No one seeing the May 3rd issue of the New York World Telegram could have failed to see and be impressed by the full page devoted to the history, activities and personalities of the New York Fencers Club. The article entitled, "Fencing in Society", dealt primarily with the important New Yorkers who had participated in this famous club's activities since its founding in 1883.
Speaking of fencing blades, and nobody has, the domestic situation is becoming very serious indeed. With the European source of supply completely shut off and domestic manufacture never having been entered upon very earnestly, the Continental blockade caught all American fencers with their pommels down. Equipment houses were fairly well stocked up at the start of the war but as time passed on the shelves began to gather voids. The situation is particularly bad in regard to sabre, Italian foil and epee blades. For a time various equipment houses swapped supplies as they needed more of this in exchange for that. Now there is practically nothing left to swap. Both Vince and Castello have undertaken the manufacture of domestic blades, but this is not proving as easy as it seemed. The problem will undoubtedly be worked out but it may be some time before our sabre men will dare to practice with real sabre blades again. They are keeping their blades now for competitive purposes and using French foil blades mounted in their sabres for practice.
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Joe Smith, coach of both the Hunter College and Brooklyn College women's fencing teams, will never forget the date of April 19, 1941. On that day his wife presented him with a brand new son and his two teams placed first and second in the Women's Intercollegiate Championships.
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Curious results always occur in three-weapon competition when the entrants are forced to lay aside their favorite weapons for a while and take up unfamiliar ones. Norman Armitage, the National Sabre Champion, placed second in the National Three-Weapon Championship on the basis of his foil rather than his sabre. He won all of his foil bouts and only one out of four bouts in sabre. His foil successes were all the more impressive for they included victories over such foilsmen as Jose and Mike de Capriles and Dean Cetrulo.
It had been rumored around that Norman Lewis had a trick or two up his sleeve in sabre. He has won enough medals in foil and epee to demand respect in those weapons and he had lately been practicing seriously with the sabre, perhaps just to make sure of himself in this three-weapon affair. There is still no answer to his potentialities in Grade A sabre competition for Norman went through the three-weapon contest without touching his sabre. He won his first bout 8-1 and his second 8-2, only to draw Mike de Capriles at his hottest and be snowed under 2-8.
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Although we doubt its authenticity we heard one about a man who walked in upon a sabre competition, saw everyone dressed in white, heard the announcement, "Dr. Huffman and Dr. Acel up! Dr. Armitage and Dr. Nyilas on deck!" and left thinking that he had come to the Surgeons' College by mistake.
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The best crack of the month, however, was the one pulled by the Harvard competitor at the I. C. F. A. Championships at Princeton who, disliking a judge's decision, commented in a loud voice, "They should give that judge an A. F. L. A. Rulesbook written in braille." That just about covers everything.
