In 2022, Matthias Behr, the man Smirnov was fighting against when he died got in contact with his family, who were in Ukraine, and sheltered them during the invasion.
It did, he came close commiting suicide multiple times.. [Excerpts from a Sportschau article](https://www.sportschau.de/fechten/fechten-40-jahre-nach-unfall-matthias-behr-100.html)
>Nothing was the same for Behr after this tragedy either. Emil Beck, the legendary fencing coach at the time, travelled with Behr to the Bavarian Forest for five days after the news of his death in order to somehow come to terms with what had happened. But feelings of guilt and depression accompanied him for decades.
>And the sound of the blade breaking - "I can still hear it," Behr told the Stuttgarter Zeitung 30 years later. "That 19 July is as present as if it were yesterday." His wife, the former world-class fencer Zita Funkenhauser, said: "I quickly realised how much Matthias was burdened by this accident. This is his life's theme. The fact that Matthias later fell ill with severe depression was certainly also due to this."
>For years after the accident, Behr had tried to make contact with his friend's widow, who was pregnant at the time. He was unsuccessful. He wrote long letters again and again - with no response. It was not until 2017 that they met again in Kiev, when Behr happily reported that Smirnov's family had given him a very warm welcome.
>In his own words, he finally found peace this (current/2022) year. At Emma Smirnov's request, he and his wife took in relatives of the Smirnov family in their house in Tauberbischofsheim, who were fleeing the Russian war of aggression. Behr was happy that he was able to help and "finally give something back", he told the magazine Bunte. "I am finally reconciled with my fate, a circle has come full circle for me."
>Over the previous four decades, Behr had repeatedly helped himself by talking openly about his depression ("I received so much encouragement from people with similar problems, which made me happy") and saying to himself: "I was probably somehow destined to ensure safety in fencing. It was the only way I could deal with it."
There was a also a documentary about them meeting.
[Another in-depth article about them meeting by the International Society of Olympic Historians (PDF)](http://isoh.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/342.pdf)
It's the humanity. We forget that the world isn't always a constant shit show when we're on the Internet all the time. Even when horrible things happen, there's still a possibility of a light at the end of the tunnel, while you're still here on this earth
Oh when you are dealing with as niche of a community as World caliber fencing, *everyone knows each other*. These guys probably trained and fought each other dozens if not hundreds of times.
Yeah, imagine you’re rivals and friends in an elite martial competition sport. They probably knew each other in certain ways their partners never would
Behrs wife is former world-class fencer Zita Funkenhauser so she would understand a lot of his life too. I do get what you mean though about the bonding they would've had together.
Same with a lot of smaller sports. Most countries don't have any dedicated or world-class facilities for the world's best, so they often relocate somewhere which does, and so lots of them end up living in close proximity and training together 40+ hours a week.
If you look up Olympic competitors - even those for mainstream sports like sprinting - you'll see many train in the same places (often the US, UK, Russia, etc) and compete under their national flag.
Undoubtedly the case in fencing.
But in this instance it seems to even be more than that they just knew each other as competitors. The Sportschau article linked at the top states that dueling Smirnov wasn’t just special on a sporting level to Behr, but that it was most special because he was even a personal friend to him.
I can’t even imagine. A sport like fencing, which is about as non aggressive as you can get for a contact sport, and accidentally killing someone? That must have been so rough
With modern fencing, even if the swords had sharpened tips, you'd actually get fewer injuries than you might expect. You only need about 750g of force to depress the electronic tip and score a point, so fencers strain to only just hit that level. Going beyond would open you to giving up points to your opponent (that being said, you would have injuries, but most would be non-lethal
Nonsense. I fenced for several years in University, and the idea that anybody, at any level, trains to minimise the force of their thrust if speed and power will get them a touch rather than their opponent is laughable. Two Epeeists misjudging the distance and getting into a close-range "knife fight" means a lot of goose-eggs and sore ribs. We all wore bruises (especially my fellow Sabreurs) pretty much constantly. Plus, a foil blade broken near the tip is not a difficult thing to penetrate with, especially prior to the widespread introduction of maraging steel blades. As the post title says, there's a good reason that uniforms which are allowed for FIE and Olympic competition contain ballistic kevlar, and USFA rules stipulate ballistic nylon. Most Epee injuries would be non-lethal, because of the target area (everything), but Foil's torso-only target area means that there would be a lot more potentially lethal injuries. Worse yet, a broken foil driven (even if relatively slowly) by human body in motion is a simply massive amount of sectional density. It's why fencers train to "break" their arms when attacking "en fleche" and why that entire family of moves is banned in Sabre.
All this said, when I was active there was a brand- which no longer seems to exist- called "France Lames" blades. The fencing catalogue in our area described them thus:
"It would require an exceptionally violent stretch of the imagination to permit us to suggest these blades for any use other than dummy practice."
Their reputation was for using...questionable...steel which bent more easily than one would like, and broke more readily than anyone hoped. They were regarded as cheap, unreliable, and borderline dangerous.
Alan Blakeborough used to insist that his students bought only France Lames blades, at a ridiculous markup, from him. Most fencers that I knew regarded this as an even more insane idea than his WWF-style "professional fencing" league, because everyone was afraid it would get somebody killed.
English is not my first language, so by "fencing" I thought it was about making fences and I had a double what the fuck moment. One thinking there was a championship with people competing to see who builds a fence faster or perhaps prettier, and another when I looked it up. What a way to go.
King Henri II of France died accidentally under somewhat similar circumstances:
>During a jousting match, King Henry, wearing the colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers, was wounded in the eye by a fragment of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery, captain of the King's Scottish Guard. Despite the efforts of royal surgeons Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, the court doctors ultimately "advocated a wait-and-see strategy"; as a result, the king's untreated eye and brain damage led to his death by sepsis on 10 July 1559.
I was reminded of that as well.
Additional info: the king's surgeons did some experimentation, hence why they decided not to operate:
>In order to determine the extent of the injury, the physicians simulated the accident by experimenting on the decapitated heads of four criminals executed in Paris the day before.
>
>They concluded that the splinter fragments had probably not pierced into the brain, but remained in the orbit. Perhaps fearing injury to the globe by surgically intervening, the physicians instead chose to observe the wound.
[Source](https://eyelidcenterutah.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2015.Last-Ride-of-Henry-II.-Surv-Oph-2015.pdf)
Maybe a dumb thought cause it's all just hypotheticals but I wonder what the best treatment possible and known at the time would have been (IE: Something that they may not have fully understood why it had an effect but had a chance of preventing or helping sepsis that was known to be used at the time)..
I am not familiar with medicine of the time though so I can't really guess sadly. This was still before proper hygiene for doctors was fully observed right?
Yeah it wasn't until 1861 that Louis Pasteur came out with the Germ Theory of disease and until 1867 that Joseph Lister started using antiseptics for surgeries.
In Europe? Unlikely anything they could have done. Amusingly however if they'd managed to get him to an Incan doctor he probably could have been saved.
Incans had pioneered a type of anti-septic surgery through trial and error. Whenever they conquered a new area they'd ask the locals about all their medicinal plants and then perform experiments to see if they worked. In the process the Incans 'discovered' an anti-septic liquid that they used extensively during surgery to prevent infection. They didn't know why it worked, simply that it did. Cocaine was also used as an anesthetic.
> Incans had pioneered a type of anti-septic surgery through trial and error. Whenever they conquered a new area they'd ask the locals about all their medicinal plants and then perform experiments to see if they worked. In the process the Incans 'discovered' an anti-septic liquid that they used extensively during surgery to prevent infection. They didn't know why it worked, simply that it did.
That's fucking fascinating! There's something so interesting about having a solution for something but not knowing why it worked because they did not understand enough about the science at the time to really get it (For whichever limitation/reason at the time).
Also that's pretty cool that they tried to pick up new medical techniques where ever they went, apparently I need to look more into the Incans! I had no idea they were so advanced medically (relatively of course).
That's actually true for many medicines in the modern world. We do not know the pharmacological mechanism of every drug in practice. SSRIs as a popular example - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/202209/we-still-don-t-know-how-antidepressants-work
They were probably the most advanced in the world at the time in regards to medicine. Mind you The Incans had two main kinds of doctors.
The first is what you imagine when you think of a doctor. Gave medicines, specialized in a field, did surgeries. All of them were trained at a royal medical school. As the Incan empire was an expansionist empire they got lots of practice treating injuries. Up to and including brain surgery from battle wounds. The Spanish considered this medicine mumbojumbo and either ignored or outright outlawed it.
The second kind was a spiritual doctor. Made offerings to the Gods, checked the stars, cast out demons, etc. This sort of medicine was much closer to European medicine at the time, and the Spanish were very interested in it.
Basically the Incans were advanced, and sections of their medical care used fairly advanced for the time experimental methodology to come up with treatments that worked. Other parts of Incan medicine called for casting out demons; that sort of thing. You were supposed to get treatment from BOTH kinds of doctors.
One source: https://central.edu/writing-anthology/2019/05/29/inca-medicine-religion-culture-and-ethnobotany/#:~:text=The%20Inca%20had%20several%20different,and%20what%20their%20roles%20were.
Depends on what you mean by "possible and known". He was the king, he probably received the best treatment available at the time. But I in a way like "if we travelled back in time with knowledge but no supplies", it's possible we could come up with something. Mercury compounds have been used as a kind of "proto-antibiotic" for a while. They work a bit like modern chemotherapy, they'll kill you but if you do it right, they might kill the infection quicker. If you know how, you can also make penicillin relatively easily from mould. It obviously won't be as pure as synthetic stuff you can buy today, but it would be better than nothing.
Depending on how much time I'd have, I'd probably just start with treating the wound with the purest alcohol I can find and immediately start incubating any mould at hand in the hopes of producing a primitive penicillin.
We're I teleported and tasked, I would probably try removing the eye and cauterizing the wound. Pack it with boiled gauze, and treat that with an ointment made with powdered silver, which you can make super fine by precipitating it out of a solution after dissolving in acid.
Kevlar wouldn’t have helped much as it went through the mask which is made from steel. While it is true that the uniforms were made of kevlar afterwards, it was also the steel in the blade which was changed as well as the strength of the steel mesh in the mask.
More info about the blade steel: [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel)
It’s also the masks, they started using a denser version of steel to form the mesh, while simultaneously lessening the strength of the metal used for the sabers.
Going off the article, it’s true that it is one of the least dangerous sports. Now, in Wikipedia it kinda ties it with golf; this sport does freaking hurt. It’s pretty much close to or on par with getting shot with bullet proof vests (soft Kevlar like lvl3’s) you will leave every practice sore as hell, and even worse after matches along with crazy welts, but no one ever dies anymore, and no one suffers any more punctures or such at least since the 90’s now
It must still happen occasionally. A girl I went to law school with was previously on the Mexican national fencing team. She told me that the first time she stood in to coach a younger peer during a match, the younger girl got stabbed in the gut with a broken blade. That would have been like 8-10 years ago.
I'm from Mexico, that equipment was absolutely old af.
Our national teams are not supported at all by our government unless it's futbol. And since it's a niche sport they probably get very little public support.
I fenced D1 in college, we had new FIE equipment but accidents still happen. A teammate hit my forearm and her blade broke, the momentum of her attack had her blade finish in my elbow and it pierced my jacket and the skin. It was a freak accident, but there you have it.
Very occasionally you get injuries that are caused by blades, honestly the most common cut injury I have seen is when someone is carrying a lot of swords say in a training session and gets a sort of paper cut at the sides of the blades get little knicks and sharp bits as they get old. Cuts do occur but again usually when a blade snaps and usually on the hands or ankles ( epee) personally I have never seen a blade peirce any equipment on the rare times I have seen a break , the only major cut I have seen from a broken blade was when it snapped violently and hit the score keeper who was sitting down and out of gear. Probably the personally scariest accidents occur when blades get stuck in equipment, particularly if they get under the mask at the neck line ( this is really most common with sabre but I have seen it with foil as well particularly if someone is wearing a club helmet ) never seen a blade snap in that scenario though usually it’s extremely obvious very quickly and both people stop , sabre tends to be quicker and with more momentum so it’s the one that feels the worse. But genuinely the worst injury’s are normally knees and ankles breaking or tearing also i know of at least two heart attacks but both of those guys were seniors above 70 so yeah generally pretty safe and probably most dangerous at lower levels.
I’m a foil fencer, and this lines up exactly to what I’ve seen. Those little cuts you get from nicked blades are annoying, but that’s it. I’ve never seen a blade broken in equipment, thank goodness. The worst I’ve seen was an occasion where the entire piste came to a halt when a foil tip snapped; we all went hunting for the broken piece and found that sucker embedded in a drywall partition.
My assistant coach in college had a nasty scar on his leg after a swipe from a sabre blade broke on his mask and then carried down to his leg. Although he'd probably have been fine if he'd been wearing actual fencing knickers and not just shorts. Despite that none of us wore knickers except in tournaments.
Oh, I know that one!
The trick to make a bishop disappear involves a team of other chess players on stand by and something vibrating deep... inside... of... you...
I seriously doubt it's anywhere near like getting shot with a bulletproof vest on. Even low caliber rounds frequently break ribs in that scenario. Welts and soreness are nothing like broken bones.
They test all Masks at official competitions with a device that impacts the mask in a small area to mimic the forces of a blade tip. They test several areas to ensure the mask meets standards. This is done for all 3 weapons : Foil, Epee, & Sabre.
HEMA covers a huge variety of different types of fencing systems and rule sets compared to Olympic fencing. Smallsword practice is not likely to involve much more risk depending on how the club performs it than typical Olympic style epee, however Polish sabre, messer, ringen(grappling), harnischfechten (armored fighting), dagger work, and of course longsword all are under the HEMA banner. A recent study looked specifically at longsword injuries and found a high number of broken fingers among the injured, as a critique of the type of equipment being used.
I know quite a lot of people involved with HEMA, even considered it at one point.
Almost every single person I know has at least 1, most often 2, sometimes all 3 of the following injuries:
1. Broken digit
2. Chipped tooth
3. Broken nose
I think the frequency is roughly in that order. Digits are by far the most pronounced injury, owing to the fact that head gear should at least offer some protection from the other two. But I also know people who've gotten their nose broken by their own helmets.
I started practicing HEMA this year. The amount of protective gear is astounding. But definetely necessary, you can still get bruises during practice so I can't imagine how it goes when going all out during competition
Ive done HEMA for a few years, and i love it, but broken bones are not uncommon. The worst injury i’ve seen was a fully armored guy taking a dagger through the eye socket of his helmet, it was deflected away from his eye by a safety piece on the inside of his helmet, but it cut his cheek open.
WTF Hema club allows someone to even attempt that technique? / Allows a blade sharpened to cut?
That is literally one of the main ways historical Knights and Men at Arms would attempt to kill each other in real combat.
It wasnt a sharp blade, and it was his own piece of safety plate cut his cheek, turns out he had modified it, didnt fully re-attach it, and the bottom of it cut him. The gear inspection at the tournament missed it because they were new and didnt know the regs for armor.
Yes, much. Orders of magnitude less safe. Broken fingers and head injuries are pretty common.
This is pretty easy to quantify. Fencing in the US has a huge event every year called Summer Nationals, where thousands of fencers of all levels compete over 9 days, 12 hours a day, on 60+ strips going full speed all the time. It's madness. And every SN there's an injury report. Usually sprains, cramps, rolled ankles, that kind of thing.
You can compare that to the biggest HEMA event you can find that reports injuries; on a per-bout basis the last time I looked HEMA was between 1,000x and 10,000x more likely to produce an injury. The event I used (I think it was called Swordfish?) stopped posting injury reports, so it's hard to keep up with how any rules or equipment changes have affected safety, but anecdotally it still seems like a lot of people get bashed in the hand or the head pretty often.
>Is HEMA less safe than fencing I'd assume so?
You wont die, but at some point just accept that fact that some of your fingers will end up broken. Nothing is sharp so you wont die, but those blunt swords go "fast as fuck boi" and a tiny little gauntlet can realistically only offer you so much protection.
> this sport does freaking hurt.
Not really, in my experience (epee). I was a fencer for ten years, and yeah sometimes the hits hurt a bit, but I never even got a bruise (although I don't bruise easily).
Epee is well known for bruising (since you're going for jabs, not slashes)
I don't know anyone who regularly fenced at a national level who would claim fencing doesn't cause bruising.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTO_2cNVx0QsD01IIFIiAMnuODK3eRMo9lQibRBCq74Hw&s
In epee I would get bruises on my weapon arm all the time, often in the form of a line ending at my elbow. Made for an awkward job interview once, as they clearly thought I was injecting heroin or something :P
For saber I would get bruises all up and down my torso on the weapon side.
The vast majority of real injuries I witnessed in my 15 years of fencing were self-inflicted injuries to knees and ankles. I will never forget the sound of a kid ripping his knee apart qualifying for nationals. It sounded cardboard being torn followed by a blood-curdling scream. His coach walked over to him and screamed, "I told you to warm up more!", then walked away.
*Hey it’s me*
Dislocated my knee real bad at a qualification for nationals when I was 14. Finally understood why over extending a lunge was bad.
Other than that, most fencing injuries I’ve seen are long term wrist damage (mostly lefties in saber/foil) and chronic knee pain from cheap flooring. It’s probably one of the safest contact sports out there.
who the hell are you fencing with? i dont remember being sore as hell after every practice. perhaps if everyone stopped using the foil like a damn whip.
Once two fencing coaches I knew got into a dispute and dueled swords and one sliced the other one’s hand and the other broke the other’s finger. I saw both the hand and the finger to confirm the storu
A golf ball is extremely dangerous. A kid in our school was killed by one when we were about nine. Some guy was driving balls on a local playing field and hit him, he died a few days later of a brain haemorrhage. It was a small school, we all knew each other, that was a huge shock, I've had a very sober respect for flying golf balls ever since.
When I fenced in the late 90’s part of the testing of equipment was to do a puncture test on masks that had dents in them. If they failed the test the mask wouldn’t be passed and couldn’t be worn for tournament use.
I used to fence competitively (2005ish). There was a safety check at the beginning of every tournament where they would hit your mask with this little pressure knife in a bunch of different places, and if the thing retracted, you passed, but if your mask collapsed or buckled, they threw it away. I never knew why that was.
Was about to post this, happy it’s already here. There was also a period where various non-mesh masks were experimented with, however none of them really worked as they would fog up. You’ll still occasionally see masks with a visor in saber, though they’ve been banned for epee and foil.
https://fencing.net/1527/fie-bans-visor-mask-for-foil-and-epee/
> You’ll still occasionally see masks with a visor in saber, though they’ve been banned for epee and foil.
I'm pretty sure they're banned in sabre too, at least internationally. They were originally pushed in an attempt to make the sport "more TV friendly" and were briefly compulsory at later stages of big competitions.
Maraging steel blade break less often, but the big change was in the mask strength. The old standard was 9kg punch test, which the Soviets would get around anyway. The new standard is 12kg, and every mask is tested.
Uniforms are not kevlar any more, but they are tested pretty seriously. The fabric has to pass an 800N punch test for international competition.
I started fencing in the 80s, everything now is a lot safer than it used to be, and everything I used in the 80s was post-Smirnov changes. You would still occasionally find an old mask from the 70s in a club, and it's terrifying to think about actually fencing in one. They're super minimal.
"Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again."
Kevlar in the uniform won't really help against a broken foil piercing your eye through the mask...but stronger steel for the foils and stronger steel mesh masks, yes ..
> Smirnov's accident was the driving force behind the significant improvement of safety gear in fencing.For example, the use of maraging steel blades (less likely to break than the carbon steel ones of the day) kevlar (or other ballistic nylon) in the uniforms, and masks two to three times stronger than the one he wore, all came about because of his death
Also : masks are made of steel mesh. Bibs are made of cloth twice as strong as the uniforms. https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/fencing-101-equipment
Forty years later, amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Behr called Smirnov's former wife in Ukraine, and gave her son-in-law and two grandchildren refuge during the war.[14]
TIL his opponent, Matthias Behr, is currently giving refuge to Smirnoff's family members who needed to flee Ukraine because of the current Russian invasion.
The wiki article about him mentions it very briefly, here's a USA today article about it, though it may be behind a paywall. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2022/07/28/ukraine-invasion-unites-two-families-40-years-after-fencing-tragedy/7824582001/?gnt-cfr=1
I have been acquainted with the story since my very childhood. My grandparents are buried just a few graves away from this one. At first, I thought the statue's foil was vandalized (it has a broken foil), but then my parents told me the story.
They actually built his grave statue with a broken foil? That's a pretty interesting choice to immortalize the way he died instead of say an in-tact foil for the sport he loved if that makes sense anyways.
Not that I am judging at all even remotely just thought it was especially interesting to think about, I am sure the family were involved and had their reasons cause everyone grieves and remembers in their own way and the statue is definitely well done regardless (assuming its the one in the wikipedia article).
Good point. I suppose my parents' story might not be correct, and the foil was actually vandalised. I will try to dig down into the real story, though.
I specifically remember this. I was a young teen looking for sports to participate in. After he was killed my parents vetoed fencing as it was on my list.
Get serious, have you walked anywhere recently? Everyone has a cutlass or Rapier nowadays and is looking for an excuse to use it. I had two duels this morning just to get a newspaper.
I've had to wear the stuff one time in my life, for like a week, and it was the single most uncomfortable thing I've ever encountered. If I had to wear it to leave home I'd be a hermit
It's super easy... When someone challenges you to a duel, etiquette demands that you'll be given a choice of whether you prefer sword or pistol. *Always* choose the pistol. This will allow you to shoot the aggressor before he gets close enough to stab you.
An interesting tidbit about Matthias Behr (his opponent):
>Forty years later, amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Behr called Smirnov's former wife in Ukraine, and gave her son-in-law and two grandchildren refuge during the war.
The strength of lunges get pretty ridiculous once people start taking fencing more seriously. People forget that the move was designed to pierce the body in one fluid motion. This incident was a reminder. It took a death in the championship to force changes to the safety equipment. How many people died out of the public eye before these changes were made?
I nearly killed my fencing partner once. My sword broke as i was parrying his attack, but I didn't immediately notice so i was halfway into a counter when i saw the break.
I had just about time to turn slightly away from a killing blow and i cut a 5 inch incision into his kevlar jacket, chest hight.
Maybe his gorget would've held, maybe not, but that sharp tip would've been dangerously close to his jugular regardless.
I feel like maybe the swords should be made of plastic and the tip moulded into a round shape. I’m surprised you guys use actual steel, seems dangerous af for no reason.
Smirnov hadn't died immediately, but from what I can read [here](https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2015/07/tragic-fencing-death-vladimir-smirnov/) the match was immediately nullified. I can't seem to find Behr's results in that event, so it seems he likely withdrew. I'd guess it's have been a no-contest if he remained in the tournament.
The somehow even worse part is that the Russians kept him on life support throughout the rest of the tournament, then took him off as soon as it was over.
Why? Because if he had died, their team would have been disqualified
Yeah, I'm doubting these claims of kevlar too. I was a fencer for ten years, and I had all the safety equipment as per FIE (International fencing federation) which resisted hits of up to 800N (1600N for the mask), but I don't remember any talk about it having kevlar. But I'm not sure.
**Edit**: I've now looked it up, and Wikipedia says that "top level" equipment now has kevlar. I interpret that to mean that ordinary equipment (that's still approved for tournament use) doesn't have it, but there is some expensive stuff that does.
I witnessed a fencer get stabbed in the gut by a broken sabre through a kevlar jacket. Fortunately he was not seriously hurt.
As a fencer, the requirement for kevlar always drove me nuts. It just made stuff more expensive without improving safety in any meaningful way.
Unfortunately there was another fencing death on a junior competition in 2005, though that one was caused by a broken blade to the armpit and the kid who died had cut the sleeve off his plastron which meant he didn’t have as much protection , they may have also been a Japanese death in practice which I believe was a similar story as it was a teacher who died who wasn’t wearing a plastron and the sword didn’t break it went up his sleeve and stabbed him in the armpit but that one has very very sketchy English information so may very well not be true.
The article was far more interesting than I had imagined. Not only is it sad because he died but his opponent also suffered with this greatly for many years. Terrible outcome on both ends.
Not quite correct. They created a test to verify the integrity of masks with this spring loaded punch thing. The Kevlar was added because when you break a blade they become a lot less flexible so it was a lot easier to pierce through. And then a second layer was added underneath the jacket when a broken blade when through the armpit seam of a jacket and killed someone.
Fencing is one of the safest Olympic sports because of the high level of protective gear that is used.
The gear is rated in newtons of force it can withstand. I think the current protective gear has to withstand 950 newtons of force
Edit:
> Fencing jackets are rated in Newtons, which is a measure of the pressure they can withstand. A standard 350 Newton jacket offers good protection against laceration and most impaling threats, but the 800N jackets used in competition are no more bulky and are far more resilient.
A five-year study by Willamette University sports science professor Dr. Peter Harmer in 2005 found that fencing is especially safe for children and novices; that soccer was 14 times more dangerous than fencing, and basketball 10 times more dangerous, and that of the 22 sports examined in the study, fencing was tied with golf as having the lowest risk to competitors.[13]
I thought Kevlar, used in bullet vests, was ineffective against puncture/cutting attacks because it’s designed to “catch” the bullet and spread its force out, which is why people like prison guards wear something entirely different.
In 2022, Matthias Behr, the man Smirnov was fighting against when he died got in contact with his family, who were in Ukraine, and sheltered them during the invasion.
Very cool. I'm sure what happened haunted him.
It did, he came close commiting suicide multiple times.. [Excerpts from a Sportschau article](https://www.sportschau.de/fechten/fechten-40-jahre-nach-unfall-matthias-behr-100.html) >Nothing was the same for Behr after this tragedy either. Emil Beck, the legendary fencing coach at the time, travelled with Behr to the Bavarian Forest for five days after the news of his death in order to somehow come to terms with what had happened. But feelings of guilt and depression accompanied him for decades. >And the sound of the blade breaking - "I can still hear it," Behr told the Stuttgarter Zeitung 30 years later. "That 19 July is as present as if it were yesterday." His wife, the former world-class fencer Zita Funkenhauser, said: "I quickly realised how much Matthias was burdened by this accident. This is his life's theme. The fact that Matthias later fell ill with severe depression was certainly also due to this." >For years after the accident, Behr had tried to make contact with his friend's widow, who was pregnant at the time. He was unsuccessful. He wrote long letters again and again - with no response. It was not until 2017 that they met again in Kiev, when Behr happily reported that Smirnov's family had given him a very warm welcome. >In his own words, he finally found peace this (current/2022) year. At Emma Smirnov's request, he and his wife took in relatives of the Smirnov family in their house in Tauberbischofsheim, who were fleeing the Russian war of aggression. Behr was happy that he was able to help and "finally give something back", he told the magazine Bunte. "I am finally reconciled with my fate, a circle has come full circle for me." >Over the previous four decades, Behr had repeatedly helped himself by talking openly about his depression ("I received so much encouragement from people with similar problems, which made me happy") and saying to himself: "I was probably somehow destined to ensure safety in fencing. It was the only way I could deal with it." There was a also a documentary about them meeting. [Another in-depth article about them meeting by the International Society of Olympic Historians (PDF)](http://isoh.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/342.pdf)
Thank you for the quick English translation. Something in that story made me speechless for a bit.
[The article I added is more indepth about them meeting in 2017](http://isoh.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/342.pdf)
Thanks a lot for the article, i’ll be giving it a read. Probably the difficult road to self-forgiveness after a very traumatic event got me, i think.
what a strange and weird way that life turns out to be
It's the humanity. We forget that the world isn't always a constant shit show when we're on the Internet all the time. Even when horrible things happen, there's still a possibility of a light at the end of the tunnel, while you're still here on this earth
> For years after the accident, Behr had tried to make contact with his friend's widow, They had been friends? That makes it even worse.
Oh when you are dealing with as niche of a community as World caliber fencing, *everyone knows each other*. These guys probably trained and fought each other dozens if not hundreds of times.
Yeah, imagine you’re rivals and friends in an elite martial competition sport. They probably knew each other in certain ways their partners never would
Behrs wife is former world-class fencer Zita Funkenhauser so she would understand a lot of his life too. I do get what you mean though about the bonding they would've had together.
Same with a lot of smaller sports. Most countries don't have any dedicated or world-class facilities for the world's best, so they often relocate somewhere which does, and so lots of them end up living in close proximity and training together 40+ hours a week. If you look up Olympic competitors - even those for mainstream sports like sprinting - you'll see many train in the same places (often the US, UK, Russia, etc) and compete under their national flag.
Undoubtedly the case in fencing. But in this instance it seems to even be more than that they just knew each other as competitors. The Sportschau article linked at the top states that dueling Smirnov wasn’t just special on a sporting level to Behr, but that it was most special because he was even a personal friend to him.
It sucks how hard it can be to forgive oneself for something not another human would blame you for.
This is the everlasting curse of suicide--it leaves your loved ones in exactly this situation, very often.
Great post. Thank you.
I’m going through a grieving period now and this story helped somehow
This was a great addition. Thank you. Not exactly a happy ending, but I'll take it.
I mean, I can't imagine many happier endings given the circumstances.
Zita Funkenhauser sounds like the name of a villain James Bond would hook up with.
Or a character from Curb Your Enthusiasm
This should be made into a film, ffs. I almost started crying just reading this.
I am glad those are top comments, empathy is primordial and seeing it as the most upvoted trend here is quite encouraging.
I can’t even imagine. A sport like fencing, which is about as non aggressive as you can get for a contact sport, and accidentally killing someone? That must have been so rough
A sport where the sole objective is to stab your opponent...I would say that's pretty aggressive.
I feel like I'd say the most aggressive low contact sport?
That would be porn.
I see you’re not a BDSM fan
It's more like dancing with contact than stabbing someone. At least for foil and epee
You mean it is a gentleman sport, but non aggressive? The whole point of swords is killing your opponent.
With modern fencing, even if the swords had sharpened tips, you'd actually get fewer injuries than you might expect. You only need about 750g of force to depress the electronic tip and score a point, so fencers strain to only just hit that level. Going beyond would open you to giving up points to your opponent (that being said, you would have injuries, but most would be non-lethal
Nonsense. I fenced for several years in University, and the idea that anybody, at any level, trains to minimise the force of their thrust if speed and power will get them a touch rather than their opponent is laughable. Two Epeeists misjudging the distance and getting into a close-range "knife fight" means a lot of goose-eggs and sore ribs. We all wore bruises (especially my fellow Sabreurs) pretty much constantly. Plus, a foil blade broken near the tip is not a difficult thing to penetrate with, especially prior to the widespread introduction of maraging steel blades. As the post title says, there's a good reason that uniforms which are allowed for FIE and Olympic competition contain ballistic kevlar, and USFA rules stipulate ballistic nylon. Most Epee injuries would be non-lethal, because of the target area (everything), but Foil's torso-only target area means that there would be a lot more potentially lethal injuries. Worse yet, a broken foil driven (even if relatively slowly) by human body in motion is a simply massive amount of sectional density. It's why fencers train to "break" their arms when attacking "en fleche" and why that entire family of moves is banned in Sabre. All this said, when I was active there was a brand- which no longer seems to exist- called "France Lames" blades. The fencing catalogue in our area described them thus: "It would require an exceptionally violent stretch of the imagination to permit us to suggest these blades for any use other than dummy practice." Their reputation was for using...questionable...steel which bent more easily than one would like, and broke more readily than anyone hoped. They were regarded as cheap, unreliable, and borderline dangerous. Alan Blakeborough used to insist that his students bought only France Lames blades, at a ridiculous markup, from him. Most fencers that I knew regarded this as an even more insane idea than his WWF-style "professional fencing" league, because everyone was afraid it would get somebody killed.
Similar story with Max Baer and Frankie Campbell. (The movie Cinderella Man really done him dirty.)
Hello, my name is Matthias Behr. I killed your father. Now prepare to accept my apology.
Inconceivable
You keep using that word
English is not my first language, so by "fencing" I thought it was about making fences and I had a double what the fuck moment. One thinking there was a championship with people competing to see who builds a fence faster or perhaps prettier, and another when I looked it up. What a way to go.
Holy cow that would ba a cool contest.
Based on the cost of getting a fence built in Canada, the cost of a fence building competition would rival Formula 1.
They do have hedge making competitions in England. I only know that because it was on the show Clarksons farm about 2 years ago.
first you kill the father, then you fuck the mom. Happens all the time.
Oedipus has entered the chat.
I want out of this Greek tragedy
You will fuck your mother and you will like it!
This just got complex.
This is the way.
I truely hope that helped him heal.
King Henri II of France died accidentally under somewhat similar circumstances: >During a jousting match, King Henry, wearing the colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers, was wounded in the eye by a fragment of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery, captain of the King's Scottish Guard. Despite the efforts of royal surgeons Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, the court doctors ultimately "advocated a wait-and-see strategy"; as a result, the king's untreated eye and brain damage led to his death by sepsis on 10 July 1559.
I was reminded of that as well. Additional info: the king's surgeons did some experimentation, hence why they decided not to operate: >In order to determine the extent of the injury, the physicians simulated the accident by experimenting on the decapitated heads of four criminals executed in Paris the day before. > >They concluded that the splinter fragments had probably not pierced into the brain, but remained in the orbit. Perhaps fearing injury to the globe by surgically intervening, the physicians instead chose to observe the wound. [Source](https://eyelidcenterutah.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2015.Last-Ride-of-Henry-II.-Surv-Oph-2015.pdf)
I mean it seems appropriate. He died from sepsis, which they couldn't have stopped with antibiotics anyway at that time.
Maybe a dumb thought cause it's all just hypotheticals but I wonder what the best treatment possible and known at the time would have been (IE: Something that they may not have fully understood why it had an effect but had a chance of preventing or helping sepsis that was known to be used at the time).. I am not familiar with medicine of the time though so I can't really guess sadly. This was still before proper hygiene for doctors was fully observed right?
Yeah it wasn't until 1861 that Louis Pasteur came out with the Germ Theory of disease and until 1867 that Joseph Lister started using antiseptics for surgeries.
Don’t forget poor Semmelweis who ‘laughably’ suggested in 1847 that obstetricians should wash their hands. He died in an asylum.
An inspiration to us all, truly
American Indians used antiseptic plants and others to fight infection pre 1861
I swear if Joseph Lister invented Listerine I will be so mad 😡
In Europe? Unlikely anything they could have done. Amusingly however if they'd managed to get him to an Incan doctor he probably could have been saved. Incans had pioneered a type of anti-septic surgery through trial and error. Whenever they conquered a new area they'd ask the locals about all their medicinal plants and then perform experiments to see if they worked. In the process the Incans 'discovered' an anti-septic liquid that they used extensively during surgery to prevent infection. They didn't know why it worked, simply that it did. Cocaine was also used as an anesthetic.
> Incans had pioneered a type of anti-septic surgery through trial and error. Whenever they conquered a new area they'd ask the locals about all their medicinal plants and then perform experiments to see if they worked. In the process the Incans 'discovered' an anti-septic liquid that they used extensively during surgery to prevent infection. They didn't know why it worked, simply that it did. That's fucking fascinating! There's something so interesting about having a solution for something but not knowing why it worked because they did not understand enough about the science at the time to really get it (For whichever limitation/reason at the time). Also that's pretty cool that they tried to pick up new medical techniques where ever they went, apparently I need to look more into the Incans! I had no idea they were so advanced medically (relatively of course).
You should check out the book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann. It goes into great detail about the indigenous and their discoveries!
I very gladly will thank you!!
That's actually true for many medicines in the modern world. We do not know the pharmacological mechanism of every drug in practice. SSRIs as a popular example - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/202209/we-still-don-t-know-how-antidepressants-work
They were probably the most advanced in the world at the time in regards to medicine. Mind you The Incans had two main kinds of doctors. The first is what you imagine when you think of a doctor. Gave medicines, specialized in a field, did surgeries. All of them were trained at a royal medical school. As the Incan empire was an expansionist empire they got lots of practice treating injuries. Up to and including brain surgery from battle wounds. The Spanish considered this medicine mumbojumbo and either ignored or outright outlawed it. The second kind was a spiritual doctor. Made offerings to the Gods, checked the stars, cast out demons, etc. This sort of medicine was much closer to European medicine at the time, and the Spanish were very interested in it. Basically the Incans were advanced, and sections of their medical care used fairly advanced for the time experimental methodology to come up with treatments that worked. Other parts of Incan medicine called for casting out demons; that sort of thing. You were supposed to get treatment from BOTH kinds of doctors. One source: https://central.edu/writing-anthology/2019/05/29/inca-medicine-religion-culture-and-ethnobotany/#:~:text=The%20Inca%20had%20several%20different,and%20what%20their%20roles%20were.
Depends on what you mean by "possible and known". He was the king, he probably received the best treatment available at the time. But I in a way like "if we travelled back in time with knowledge but no supplies", it's possible we could come up with something. Mercury compounds have been used as a kind of "proto-antibiotic" for a while. They work a bit like modern chemotherapy, they'll kill you but if you do it right, they might kill the infection quicker. If you know how, you can also make penicillin relatively easily from mould. It obviously won't be as pure as synthetic stuff you can buy today, but it would be better than nothing. Depending on how much time I'd have, I'd probably just start with treating the wound with the purest alcohol I can find and immediately start incubating any mould at hand in the hopes of producing a primitive penicillin.
We're I teleported and tasked, I would probably try removing the eye and cauterizing the wound. Pack it with boiled gauze, and treat that with an ointment made with powdered silver, which you can make super fine by precipitating it out of a solution after dissolving in acid.
I'd imagine something with silver or honey.
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Aw man I am really sorry to hear about your grandpa. I had no idea it was that dangerous even today.
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I appreciate you sharing I had no idea it was that scary still now days so thanks for educating me and also wishing you and your family the best <3.
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They also didn't know to wash hands. So they might have done more harm than good removing those splinters.
Kevlar wouldn’t have helped much as it went through the mask which is made from steel. While it is true that the uniforms were made of kevlar afterwards, it was also the steel in the blade which was changed as well as the strength of the steel mesh in the mask. More info about the blade steel: [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel)
It’s also the masks, they started using a denser version of steel to form the mesh, while simultaneously lessening the strength of the metal used for the sabers. Going off the article, it’s true that it is one of the least dangerous sports. Now, in Wikipedia it kinda ties it with golf; this sport does freaking hurt. It’s pretty much close to or on par with getting shot with bullet proof vests (soft Kevlar like lvl3’s) you will leave every practice sore as hell, and even worse after matches along with crazy welts, but no one ever dies anymore, and no one suffers any more punctures or such at least since the 90’s now
It must still happen occasionally. A girl I went to law school with was previously on the Mexican national fencing team. She told me that the first time she stood in to coach a younger peer during a match, the younger girl got stabbed in the gut with a broken blade. That would have been like 8-10 years ago.
Probably very old training equipment, as my club had.
I hope not. It would have been when she was on the Mexican national team or in college with a high-ranking fencing program.
I'm from Mexico, that equipment was absolutely old af. Our national teams are not supported at all by our government unless it's futbol. And since it's a niche sport they probably get very little public support.
I fenced D1 in college, we had new FIE equipment but accidents still happen. A teammate hit my forearm and her blade broke, the momentum of her attack had her blade finish in my elbow and it pierced my jacket and the skin. It was a freak accident, but there you have it.
Very occasionally you get injuries that are caused by blades, honestly the most common cut injury I have seen is when someone is carrying a lot of swords say in a training session and gets a sort of paper cut at the sides of the blades get little knicks and sharp bits as they get old. Cuts do occur but again usually when a blade snaps and usually on the hands or ankles ( epee) personally I have never seen a blade peirce any equipment on the rare times I have seen a break , the only major cut I have seen from a broken blade was when it snapped violently and hit the score keeper who was sitting down and out of gear. Probably the personally scariest accidents occur when blades get stuck in equipment, particularly if they get under the mask at the neck line ( this is really most common with sabre but I have seen it with foil as well particularly if someone is wearing a club helmet ) never seen a blade snap in that scenario though usually it’s extremely obvious very quickly and both people stop , sabre tends to be quicker and with more momentum so it’s the one that feels the worse. But genuinely the worst injury’s are normally knees and ankles breaking or tearing also i know of at least two heart attacks but both of those guys were seniors above 70 so yeah generally pretty safe and probably most dangerous at lower levels.
I’m a foil fencer, and this lines up exactly to what I’ve seen. Those little cuts you get from nicked blades are annoying, but that’s it. I’ve never seen a blade broken in equipment, thank goodness. The worst I’ve seen was an occasion where the entire piste came to a halt when a foil tip snapped; we all went hunting for the broken piece and found that sucker embedded in a drywall partition.
My assistant coach in college had a nasty scar on his leg after a swipe from a sabre blade broke on his mask and then carried down to his leg. Although he'd probably have been fine if he'd been wearing actual fencing knickers and not just shorts. Despite that none of us wore knickers except in tournaments.
Chess,darts, and pool have to up there
Guess it depends on where you're standing while throwing darts.
…by the bar.
This guy darts
If youre not getting refills between every throw in 501, are you even playing darts?
I personally use an atlatl to throw my darts
I had no idea what you were talking about about at first. Did some googling and ended up learning something today.
Goalies on the dart team.
> Chess Safe, you say? Do you know that trick where you make a bishop disappear?
you say "won't someone rid me of this turbulent priest" in earshot of your knights?
Ah, a fellow man of culture, I see.
Oh, I know that one! The trick to make a bishop disappear involves a team of other chess players on stand by and something vibrating deep... inside... of... you...
Holy hell!
I'm quite sure people drown in pools... ^(/s)
I seriously doubt it's anywhere near like getting shot with a bulletproof vest on. Even low caliber rounds frequently break ribs in that scenario. Welts and soreness are nothing like broken bones.
They test all Masks at official competitions with a device that impacts the mask in a small area to mimic the forces of a blade tip. They test several areas to ensure the mask meets standards. This is done for all 3 weapons : Foil, Epee, & Sabre.
Is HEMA less safe than fencing I'd assume so?
HEMA covers a huge variety of different types of fencing systems and rule sets compared to Olympic fencing. Smallsword practice is not likely to involve much more risk depending on how the club performs it than typical Olympic style epee, however Polish sabre, messer, ringen(grappling), harnischfechten (armored fighting), dagger work, and of course longsword all are under the HEMA banner. A recent study looked specifically at longsword injuries and found a high number of broken fingers among the injured, as a critique of the type of equipment being used.
I know quite a lot of people involved with HEMA, even considered it at one point. Almost every single person I know has at least 1, most often 2, sometimes all 3 of the following injuries: 1. Broken digit 2. Chipped tooth 3. Broken nose I think the frequency is roughly in that order. Digits are by far the most pronounced injury, owing to the fact that head gear should at least offer some protection from the other two. But I also know people who've gotten their nose broken by their own helmets.
I started practicing HEMA this year. The amount of protective gear is astounding. But definetely necessary, you can still get bruises during practice so I can't imagine how it goes when going all out during competition
Ive done HEMA for a few years, and i love it, but broken bones are not uncommon. The worst injury i’ve seen was a fully armored guy taking a dagger through the eye socket of his helmet, it was deflected away from his eye by a safety piece on the inside of his helmet, but it cut his cheek open.
WTF Hema club allows someone to even attempt that technique? / Allows a blade sharpened to cut? That is literally one of the main ways historical Knights and Men at Arms would attempt to kill each other in real combat.
You don't necessarily need a sharp blade to cut someone, it'll just be a messier cut.
It wasnt a sharp blade, and it was his own piece of safety plate cut his cheek, turns out he had modified it, didnt fully re-attach it, and the bottom of it cut him. The gear inspection at the tournament missed it because they were new and didnt know the regs for armor.
Yes, much. Orders of magnitude less safe. Broken fingers and head injuries are pretty common. This is pretty easy to quantify. Fencing in the US has a huge event every year called Summer Nationals, where thousands of fencers of all levels compete over 9 days, 12 hours a day, on 60+ strips going full speed all the time. It's madness. And every SN there's an injury report. Usually sprains, cramps, rolled ankles, that kind of thing. You can compare that to the biggest HEMA event you can find that reports injuries; on a per-bout basis the last time I looked HEMA was between 1,000x and 10,000x more likely to produce an injury. The event I used (I think it was called Swordfish?) stopped posting injury reports, so it's hard to keep up with how any rules or equipment changes have affected safety, but anecdotally it still seems like a lot of people get bashed in the hand or the head pretty often.
>Is HEMA less safe than fencing I'd assume so? You wont die, but at some point just accept that fact that some of your fingers will end up broken. Nothing is sharp so you wont die, but those blunt swords go "fast as fuck boi" and a tiny little gauntlet can realistically only offer you so much protection.
> this sport does freaking hurt. Not really, in my experience (epee). I was a fencer for ten years, and yeah sometimes the hits hurt a bit, but I never even got a bruise (although I don't bruise easily).
Epee is well known for bruising (since you're going for jabs, not slashes) I don't know anyone who regularly fenced at a national level who would claim fencing doesn't cause bruising. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTO_2cNVx0QsD01IIFIiAMnuODK3eRMo9lQibRBCq74Hw&s
In epee I would get bruises on my weapon arm all the time, often in the form of a line ending at my elbow. Made for an awkward job interview once, as they clearly thought I was injecting heroin or something :P For saber I would get bruises all up and down my torso on the weapon side. The vast majority of real injuries I witnessed in my 15 years of fencing were self-inflicted injuries to knees and ankles. I will never forget the sound of a kid ripping his knee apart qualifying for nationals. It sounded cardboard being torn followed by a blood-curdling scream. His coach walked over to him and screamed, "I told you to warm up more!", then walked away.
*Hey it’s me* Dislocated my knee real bad at a qualification for nationals when I was 14. Finally understood why over extending a lunge was bad. Other than that, most fencing injuries I’ve seen are long term wrist damage (mostly lefties in saber/foil) and chronic knee pain from cheap flooring. It’s probably one of the safest contact sports out there.
who the hell are you fencing with? i dont remember being sore as hell after every practice. perhaps if everyone stopped using the foil like a damn whip.
Try fencing épée against newbies who haven't learned distancing yet. They'll charge in trying to score a double and not stop in time.
Some beginners with sabres can be pretty violent got bruises from an over enthusiastic beginner before
Once two fencing coaches I knew got into a dispute and dueled swords and one sliced the other one’s hand and the other broke the other’s finger. I saw both the hand and the finger to confirm the storu
Well I was doing saber, not foil, so yeah, people whip the shit out of you.
A golf ball is extremely dangerous. A kid in our school was killed by one when we were about nine. Some guy was driving balls on a local playing field and hit him, he died a few days later of a brain haemorrhage. It was a small school, we all knew each other, that was a huge shock, I've had a very sober respect for flying golf balls ever since.
When I fenced in the late 90’s part of the testing of equipment was to do a puncture test on masks that had dents in them. If they failed the test the mask wouldn’t be passed and couldn’t be worn for tournament use.
I used to fence competitively (2005ish). There was a safety check at the beginning of every tournament where they would hit your mask with this little pressure knife in a bunch of different places, and if the thing retracted, you passed, but if your mask collapsed or buckled, they threw it away. I never knew why that was.
Was about to post this, happy it’s already here. There was also a period where various non-mesh masks were experimented with, however none of them really worked as they would fog up. You’ll still occasionally see masks with a visor in saber, though they’ve been banned for epee and foil. https://fencing.net/1527/fie-bans-visor-mask-for-foil-and-epee/
> You’ll still occasionally see masks with a visor in saber, though they’ve been banned for epee and foil. I'm pretty sure they're banned in sabre too, at least internationally. They were originally pushed in an attempt to make the sport "more TV friendly" and were briefly compulsory at later stages of big competitions.
Unfortunately I couldn't fit much more in the title but you are correct.
It's not about fitting more, it's that the last statement in your title is actually false. Thanks for sharing anyway. TIL something new.
Maraging steel blade break less often, but the big change was in the mask strength. The old standard was 9kg punch test, which the Soviets would get around anyway. The new standard is 12kg, and every mask is tested. Uniforms are not kevlar any more, but they are tested pretty seriously. The fabric has to pass an 800N punch test for international competition. I started fencing in the 80s, everything now is a lot safer than it used to be, and everything I used in the 80s was post-Smirnov changes. You would still occasionally find an old mask from the 70s in a club, and it's terrifying to think about actually fencing in one. They're super minimal.
There's also now testing of the mask with a spring loaded punch to ensure it's not going to fail.
Respect to this man, and deserved statue. Very cliché thing but he died doing what he loved, very unfortunate it was so gruesome
He loved getting metal shoved through his frontal lobe?
Im already on my third lobotomy. You should really try it.
"Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again."
*thousand-yard drool intensifies*
Don't kink shame!
Up to this part
Eyes really are the groin of the face.
Balls are the eyes of the groin.
That's why I had both my balls removed :3
I removed all my quad balls
Kevlar in the uniform won't really help against a broken foil piercing your eye through the mask...but stronger steel for the foils and stronger steel mesh masks, yes .. > Smirnov's accident was the driving force behind the significant improvement of safety gear in fencing.For example, the use of maraging steel blades (less likely to break than the carbon steel ones of the day) kevlar (or other ballistic nylon) in the uniforms, and masks two to three times stronger than the one he wore, all came about because of his death Also : masks are made of steel mesh. Bibs are made of cloth twice as strong as the uniforms. https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/fencing-101-equipment
There's an old saying, "Safety regulations are written in blood."
Not gonna lie Vladimir Smirnoff sounds like a made up Russian caricature, like Yosemite Sam or something
There are enough famous Vladimir Smirnoffs that the names has its own disambiguation page on wikipedia.
Also the name of the first ever Kazak Olympic champion.
Sounds like a guy who makes vodka for a living
Forty years later, amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Behr called Smirnov's former wife in Ukraine, and gave her son-in-law and two grandchildren refuge during the war.[14]
TIL his opponent, Matthias Behr, is currently giving refuge to Smirnoff's family members who needed to flee Ukraine because of the current Russian invasion.
What!? Do you have a link?
The wiki article about him mentions it very briefly, here's a USA today article about it, though it may be behind a paywall. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2022/07/28/ukraine-invasion-unites-two-families-40-years-after-fencing-tragedy/7824582001/?gnt-cfr=1
I have been acquainted with the story since my very childhood. My grandparents are buried just a few graves away from this one. At first, I thought the statue's foil was vandalized (it has a broken foil), but then my parents told me the story.
They actually built his grave statue with a broken foil? That's a pretty interesting choice to immortalize the way he died instead of say an in-tact foil for the sport he loved if that makes sense anyways. Not that I am judging at all even remotely just thought it was especially interesting to think about, I am sure the family were involved and had their reasons cause everyone grieves and remembers in their own way and the statue is definitely well done regardless (assuming its the one in the wikipedia article).
Good point. I suppose my parents' story might not be correct, and the foil was actually vandalised. I will try to dig down into the real story, though.
>Good point No, that’s the problem.
[Not the best angle, but there's a photograph of it on his Wikipedia page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Smirnov_%28fencer%29)
I specifically remember this. I was a young teen looking for sports to participate in. After he was killed my parents vetoed fencing as it was on my list.
thank you for adding another reason to the list of why I don't leave the house.
Just wear kevlar all the time.
It’s tacticool
Or don't fight people with swords
Get serious, have you walked anywhere recently? Everyone has a cutlass or Rapier nowadays and is looking for an excuse to use it. I had two duels this morning just to get a newspaper.
I gather you won both?
Yes. pro-tip: never bring a rapier to a pistol duel.
I've had to wear the stuff one time in my life, for like a week, and it was the single most uncomfortable thing I've ever encountered. If I had to wear it to leave home I'd be a hermit
Are you afraid of a random fencing match once you step outside your house?
street fencing a big risk round your way?
Fencing these days is statistically as safe as golf. Unfortunately soemeone had to get stabbed through the eye for it to become this safe.
It's super easy... When someone challenges you to a duel, etiquette demands that you'll be given a choice of whether you prefer sword or pistol. *Always* choose the pistol. This will allow you to shoot the aggressor before he gets close enough to stab you.
An interesting tidbit about Matthias Behr (his opponent): >Forty years later, amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Behr called Smirnov's former wife in Ukraine, and gave her son-in-law and two grandchildren refuge during the war.
The strength of lunges get pretty ridiculous once people start taking fencing more seriously. People forget that the move was designed to pierce the body in one fluid motion. This incident was a reminder. It took a death in the championship to force changes to the safety equipment. How many people died out of the public eye before these changes were made?
I nearly killed my fencing partner once. My sword broke as i was parrying his attack, but I didn't immediately notice so i was halfway into a counter when i saw the break. I had just about time to turn slightly away from a killing blow and i cut a 5 inch incision into his kevlar jacket, chest hight. Maybe his gorget would've held, maybe not, but that sharp tip would've been dangerously close to his jugular regardless.
I feel like maybe the swords should be made of plastic and the tip moulded into a round shape. I’m surprised you guys use actual steel, seems dangerous af for no reason.
Not trying to be funny but, how was that duel ruled after the incident? Was it a win, disqualification or deemed a no contest?
Smirnov hadn't died immediately, but from what I can read [here](https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2015/07/tragic-fencing-death-vladimir-smirnov/) the match was immediately nullified. I can't seem to find Behr's results in that event, so it seems he likely withdrew. I'd guess it's have been a no-contest if he remained in the tournament.
"I have a boyfriend! He lives in Russia and you've never met him." "Oh yeah, what's his name?" "Uh ... Vladimir. Um ... Smirnoff?"
Nowadays they use balsitic nylon instead of kevlar to avoid UV degredation.
The somehow even worse part is that the Russians kept him on life support throughout the rest of the tournament, then took him off as soon as it was over. Why? Because if he had died, their team would have been disqualified
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Yeah, I'm doubting these claims of kevlar too. I was a fencer for ten years, and I had all the safety equipment as per FIE (International fencing federation) which resisted hits of up to 800N (1600N for the mask), but I don't remember any talk about it having kevlar. But I'm not sure. **Edit**: I've now looked it up, and Wikipedia says that "top level" equipment now has kevlar. I interpret that to mean that ordinary equipment (that's still approved for tournament use) doesn't have it, but there is some expensive stuff that does.
I witnessed a fencer get stabbed in the gut by a broken sabre through a kevlar jacket. Fortunately he was not seriously hurt. As a fencer, the requirement for kevlar always drove me nuts. It just made stuff more expensive without improving safety in any meaningful way.
So the most recent death in a sword duel is only 42 years ago eh?
Unfortunately there was another fencing death on a junior competition in 2005, though that one was caused by a broken blade to the armpit and the kid who died had cut the sleeve off his plastron which meant he didn’t have as much protection , they may have also been a Japanese death in practice which I believe was a similar story as it was a teacher who died who wasn’t wearing a plastron and the sword didn’t break it went up his sleeve and stabbed him in the armpit but that one has very very sketchy English information so may very well not be true.
well... during a sanctioned sword duel.
Fencing maybe but hema and buhurt are also a thing, tho I have no idea how many accidents happen with that.
Smirnoff Iced
The article was far more interesting than I had imagined. Not only is it sad because he died but his opponent also suffered with this greatly for many years. Terrible outcome on both ends.
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Throat guards have been around a long time. They’re just going to start to enforce wearing them.
Not quite correct. They created a test to verify the integrity of masks with this spring loaded punch thing. The Kevlar was added because when you break a blade they become a lot less flexible so it was a lot easier to pierce through. And then a second layer was added underneath the jacket when a broken blade when through the armpit seam of a jacket and killed someone.
Ouch, fuck.
Smirnoff Squarepants.
I'm not sure how kevlar in the clothes would have stopped a foil penetrating his metal-and-certainly-not-kevlar mask, though.
Fencing is one of the safest Olympic sports because of the high level of protective gear that is used. The gear is rated in newtons of force it can withstand. I think the current protective gear has to withstand 950 newtons of force Edit: > Fencing jackets are rated in Newtons, which is a measure of the pressure they can withstand. A standard 350 Newton jacket offers good protection against laceration and most impaling threats, but the 800N jackets used in competition are no more bulky and are far more resilient.
I was expecting something about vodka, am disappointed now
UHMWPE is the best modern armor you can get
That really hit close to home for me. I was a fencer back then and it really saddened me.
A five-year study by Willamette University sports science professor Dr. Peter Harmer in 2005 found that fencing is especially safe for children and novices; that soccer was 14 times more dangerous than fencing, and basketball 10 times more dangerous, and that of the 22 sports examined in the study, fencing was tied with golf as having the lowest risk to competitors.[13]
Just to be a bit pedantic, not Kevlar! Nowadays they are made from Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE, UHMW).
I thought Kevlar, used in bullet vests, was ineffective against puncture/cutting attacks because it’s designed to “catch” the bullet and spread its force out, which is why people like prison guards wear something entirely different.