Fencing is a specialized but fundamental sport in the Olympic Games, having been contested at every Summer Games since 1896. However, despite its elegant reputation and its simple objective (touching an opponent with your sword before being touched), the sport has long been plagued with drama and suspicion.
Two months before the Paris Olympics, international saber fencing is embroiled in questions about the integrity of refereeing, accusations of preferential treatment and concerns among top athletes and coaches that their sport’s tangled connections may be helping decide who will compete in the Games.
The federation that governs fencing in the United States, USA Fencing, recently suspended two international referees after they admitted to communicating with each other during an Olympic qualifying tournament in California. He became so concerned about two other referees that he asked the sport’s world governing body to ensure that those two judges were no longer assigned to any matches involving Americans.
And just last week, more than half a dozen elite fencers demanded harsher punishments and urgent action to protect a sport they say is “vulnerable to unfair refereeing and match-fixing.”
“Part of me feels so stupid for thinking all this time” that the sport was built on honor, integrity and dedication, said Andrew Mackiewicz, 28, an American saber fencer who competed in the Games. Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
“It wasn’t,” he added. “It was like a mirage.” He said he stepped away from the sport in February because of his concerns about unscrupulous officiating.
Judgment calls
Although fencing is based on electronic scoring, it is the referees who analyze the complicated rules of attack during each match and decide whether a point or touch is valid. Those rules bring an element of subjectivity to scoring, and saber fencing, one of the sport’s three disciplines along with épée and foil, can be particularly challenging because its athletes lunge explosively at each other and touch each other almost simultaneously. .
Subjectivity “creates a lot of room for corruption,” which can be difficult to prove, said Yury Gelman, a longtime fencing coach at St. John’s University in New York who will coach in his seventh Olympics in the Paris Games. In an interview, Gelman expressed his frustration that little was being done to address the problems of saber fencing.
Referees who were suspended last month by USA Fencing, Jacobo Morales and Brandon Romo, have been banned from judging matches in tournaments supervised by the federation for nine months. They denied any manipulation of the party. An investigation into their conduct began after they appeared to have communicated during a match in January involving the top American fencer, 19-year-old Tatiana Nazlymov, in an Olympic qualifying tournament.
USA Fencing had initially sought 10-year bans for both men, but ultimately opted for lesser punishments after a disciplinary panel report, reviewed by The New York Times, found “the appearance of wrongdoing” but no credible evidence to support collusion or other manipulation.
But they were not the only referees who caught the attention of the American federation. Months earlier, Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, had written in alarm to the sport’s world governing body, the International Fencing Federation, to express concern that there was “likely inadequate officiating” in bouts involving Ms. . Nazlymov and other prominent American fencer Mitchell Saron.
In its letter, sent Dec. 3 and reviewed by The Times, USA Fencing said it was primarily concerned about two referees, Vasil Milenchev of Bulgaria and Yevgeniy Dyaokokin of Kazakhstan. Video evidence, the letter said, indicated that calls made by those referees in fights involving Mr. Saron and Ms. Nazlymov showed “likely favoritism” toward them.
As a result, USA Fencing requested that Mr. Milenchev and Mr. Dyaokokin no longer be assigned to bouts involving any American fencers. Andrews said he understood the International Fencing Federation responded to the letter with an investigation but did not know its outcome.
The international federation did not respond to requests for comment, but both referees continue to judge matches involving American fencers. Attempts to contact Milenchev and Dyaokokin through the international federation were unsuccessful.
In a second letter written by USA Fencing that was sent to Ms. Nazlymov and Mr. Saron on Dec. 18 and also reviewed by The Times, Mr. Andrews told the athletes that the federation was aware that “a possible preferential treatment as a referee” was benefiting. their performances in international competitions, and he warned them that they could be stripped of some points they had accumulated towards Olympic qualification if “strong evidence” of match manipulation emerged.
Nazlymov and Saron have since been named to the U.S. team for the Paris Olympics. And in March, USA Fencing’s concerns seemed to have eased. Saron acknowledged through a spokesman that on March 6 he had received a text message, which was reviewed by The Times, from a federation official that said he was not a cause for concern.
Andrews said in an interview that there was no evidence that any of the fencers knew about or knowingly took advantage of the improper refereeing. And preliminary results of an independent investigation into match manipulation in saber fencing found “no evidence that individual American fencers were actively involved in the manipulation of their own matches,” the federation said in late April.
Nazlymov did not respond to a request for comment. But her mother, Zheng Wang, wrote in an email that “Tatiana is absolutely innocent and the accusation of cheating/match fixing is ridiculous.”
A network of connections
The latest high point came in early January, when Nazlymov participated in the North American Cup match in San Jose, California.
According to a USA Fencing disciplinary panel, with the score tied 12-12, Romo began seeking Morales’ input before awarding points to either fencer, and Morales acknowledged responding with hand gestures. Such communication is a violation of the rules of fencing.
Howard Jacobs, a California lawyer who represented Morales, the more experienced referee, said his client was simply confirming calls that the less experienced Romo planned to make, and that no decisions were changed because of his communications. According to the report, Romo said he was only seeking confirmation of the planned calls.
A video posted online that showed Morales signaling also showed Nazlymov’s coach sitting nearby and talking to Morales at some point during the match. None of the referees questioned the video, USA Fencing said.
According to testimony at a hearing, the trainer, Fikrat Valiyev, asked Morales who Romo was and another question unrelated to the fight, but the two did not discuss any calls, Jacobs said. Ms. Nazlymov narrowly won the match, 15-14.
Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, said there was “no evidence that Tatiana herself was at fault” in the arbitration dispute.
Ms. Nazlymov is a member of one of fencing’s most prominent families. Her grandfather, Vladimir Nazlymov, won three Olympic gold medals in the former Soviet Union’s team saber competition, and her father, Vitali Nazlymov, is a former NCAA individual champion.
His coach, Mr. Valiyev, is a two-time Olympic saber fencer from Azerbaijan, but he is also an example of the complicated relationships that exist in elite fencing. In addition to being Ms. Nazlymov’s head coach, he works at the Nazlymov family fencing academy in Maryland and as an international referee at the Olympic level.
Ms. Wang, Ms. Nazlymov’s mother, said in an email that her daughter had been wrongly accused in what she described as a “doctored” video posted in January by Andrew Fischl, an American coach and former elite fencer. with saber
Fischl, who regularly posts fencing videos, said he obtained two raw video clips from the January match and expanded on the fight, but did not change the order of any actions, distort any events or make any accusations. “I just showed what happened and thought, this is strange and inappropriate,” Fischl said.
Valiyev has not been accused of any wrongdoing and said in an email that he had never attempted to manipulate matches. But he has come under scrutiny in other videos posted online for possible conflicts of interest by coaching and refereeing in the same competition, and by refereeing matches involving Uzbek fencers while Vladimir Nazlymov was coaching the Uzbekistan national team or individual Uzbek athletes.
Valiyev, responding by email to Vitali Nazlymov, said he behaved according to the rules. But the two coaches acknowledged that “fencing is a small world and conflicts exist everywhere.”
Eli Dershwitz, 28, the 2023 United States world saber champion, said that while irregularities occurred in fencing “all the time,” he believed in the integrity of the sport and his fellow Olympians. “If I thought something blatantly wrong was happening, I would say something,” Dershwitz said.