Champions & Circuit

Though nobody now considers it a sport for effeminate weaklings, U. S. fencing has produced surprisingly few top-notch masculine performers. For the past few years a half-dozen men have held a virtual monopoly on U. S. fencing titles. Last week in Manhattan a small clique of enthusiasts watched three of these men parry & thrust their way once more to national amateur championships.

Fencers Hugh V. Alessandroni and Norman C. Armitage starred on Columbia University's 1928 team, have since pushed steadily to the top. A stocky left-hander who moves surprisingly fast for his build, Alessandroni won the foils title in 1934, was runner-up last year. Tied for first place with the defending champion, Joseph L. Levis, and the national three-weapon champion, John R. Huffman, he made spectacular use of the parry-riposte, beat them both in a triple fence-off last week. Tall, willowy Norman Armitage, who sports a little waxed mustache, had little difficulty in taking his third straight sabre title.

Feature of the epee contests was not the victory of Lieut. Gustave M. Heiss, U. S. A., who held the title in 1933 and 1934, but the first use in the national tournament of an intricate electric gadget, perfected by Fencer Alessandroni, which automatically records every touch. At the tip of each epee is a special plunger which, when it touches an opponent's body, is depressed, thereby closing an electric circuit. A double wire runs down the sword, up the performer's sleeve, down to his belt and along the strip to a reel, which gives the wire enough play for the fencer's movements, and thence to a control box. One-tenth of a second after a touch closes the circuit, a bell tinkles and a light flashes simultaneously on the judge's table, indicating which contestant has scored the point.

Though adding little grace to the fencers' postures, this device so successfully silenced the usual squawking over points that the U. S. Olympic fencing committee decided to take it to Berlin this summer. With it will go a team of 18 men and three women hopeful of capturing the U. S.'s first Olympic fencing championship.

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