Keeth Smart, center, celebrates with his sister, Erinn (holding his hand) and wife, Shyra, after the men’s saber team beat Russia for the silver medal. Team captain Jeff Bukantz is on the far left.
Photo courtesy Jeff Bukantz
August 28, 2008
After the women’s saber fencers garnered a whopping four Olympic medals, the conventional wisdom was that there would be no more for the 2008 United States fencing team.
It was a reasonable opinion, as both the women’s foil team and men’s saber team were seeded seventh out of their eight team fields. Each would face the No. 2 ranked teams in the world, and neither was expected to pull off an upset.
Well, was the world of fencing about to be shocked.
First up was the women’s foil team against heavily favored Poland. Team matches have three fencers from each team competing against each other in a round-robin format of nine bouts. Each bout goes to the next increment of five touches (points), and ends when one team reaches 45. Some matches are unusually defensive, however, and the score does not reach that number. In these cases, the team in the lead when the ninth and final bout ends after its three-minute time limit expires is the winner.
We held a tenuous 25-24 lead going into the final bout between Brooklyn’s Erinn Smart and Slywia Gruchala. The nail-biter went touch-for-touch as the time limit approached. Smart was ahead 31-30 with seconds to go. Gruchala made one final attack, Erinn parried it, the clock hit “0:00,” and our team was into the medal round. Unbelievable!
They were ecstatic but had to regroup for the semifinal match against Hungary two hours later.
Our team took the lead in the third bout and when New York City’s Emily Cross beat Edina Knapek, 7-1, in the eighth bout, it gave us a seemingly insurmountable 33-19 lead. In anyone’s wildest dreams, a 14-touch deficit would be nearly impossible to overcome in the final three minutes.
But, those wildest dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Hungarian closer Aida Mohamed outscored Smart 10-0 in the first minute. While Mohamed deserves credit for her prowess, the reality was that Smart fell into a trance-like state and didn’t appear to have a chance of snapping out of it. The mood on our bench went from disbelief that we were about to reach the gold medal match to disbelief that we were about to blow the biggest lead in fencing history.
Mohamed was moving, Smart was not, and it seemed as if the clock was not either. In the last two minutes, Smart was able to hold Mohamed to just four more touches while scoring two of her own. Smart was outhit 14-2, but those two points provided the margin of victory as the clock mercifully ran out.
And then we ran out to embrace the stunned Smart. I hugged her and said, “Erinn, you did it! You closed the two matches and put us into the gold medal match!”
I don’t think she heard me.
The team was spent and was soundly beaten by Russia 28-11 in the finals. For all intents and purposes, the silver medal was as good as the gold.
The next and final day would feature the men’s saber competition. Again, we were seeded seventh and drew the highly favored No. 2 seeded Hungarians. By chance, with identical seeding in 2004, we upset the Hungarians in the quarterfinals.
As we walked from the warm-up room to the waiting room, it was obvious that the Hungarians were nervous. While we were loose and joking, they were tight and clearly concerned.
The match was nip and tuck, always within two or three touches, until the Hungarians built up a 40-36 lead going into the final bout. Keeth Smart, who had painstakingly cheered on his sister the previous day, would have to beat Zsolt Nemcsik, the 2004 silver medalist, by at least 9-4 in order to win.
Smart did just that, and his heroic comeback put us in the medal round, 45-44. Wow!
As we approached the semifinal with Russia, the terrible flashbacks of Athens rematerialized. With Smart closing, we first lost to France 45-44 to reach the gold medal match and then lost to Russia 45-44 for the bronze. Against Russia, Smart took a big 40-35 lead into the final bout against Stanislav Podzniakov but was outhit 10-4. The team, and Smart in particular, were demoralized by the Athens losses.
In a direct reversal, this time the Russians led 40-35 going into the last bout between — you guessed it — Podzniakov and Smart. With no real expectations that he would do so, we told Smart to return the favor from Athens.
Smart was hanging with the five-time world champion until the score was 43-44. At that point, Smart attacked. Podzniakov parried and riposted for the victory. But we noticed that the side judge had raised his hand during Smart’s attack, signifying that he had gone off the lateral side of the strip. This would negate the attack, as well as any subsequent action by Podzniakov. But as the actions occurred in bang-bang fashion, the side judge panicked and put his hand down as Podzniakov made the riposte.
I jumped up out of my seat, told Smart not to shake hands with his opponent, and challenged the call with his remaining video replay challenge. I yelled over to the referee the reason for our challenge, then I yelled over to the video replay referee to tell him the rules were on our side and that I would protest a decision to allow the touch. I’m a member of the International Fencing Federation rules commission; they knew I had them.
Amazingly, the last touch was nullified and Smart had a rare second chance. He scored the next touch to tie the score at 44-44. Oh, my. This would be the fourth consecutive Olympic match in which Smart faced the do-or-die touch.
The referee said, “Allez,” and Smart first retreated before flunging (a flying lunge) at the stunned Podzniakov and scoring the greatest touch in American fencing history. He fell to the strip on his back, did a backward summersault, and then came flying off the raised strip into our waiting arms. By the time he landed, we were all crying uncontrollably.
Tears of joy for us. Tears of joy for at least a silver medal. But mostly tears of joy for Keeth Smart, who had finally slayed the dragon of Athens!
The team was a little flat in the gold medal match, and lost 45-37 to defending gold medalist France. But there was a gold lining in that silver medal, as this team overcame the Athens debacle with the happiest ending in Beijing.
In all, the United States Fencing Team won six medals at the 2008 Games, tripling the previous biggest success in Athens. It is probably a performance that will never be equaled or surpassed.
From a personal standpoint, this Olympics provided the epitome of mixed emotions for me. My father, Dan, passed away just three days before I departed for Beijing. I barely had time to cry, let alone comprehend the situation. While my father never got to see America’s greatest fencing moment, he was so happy that I was team captain again. Between the two of us, this was the 13th Olympic Games representing the United States as either a competitor, referee, or team captain.
Our team had just one Jewish athlete, Sada Jacobson, but the cadre was loaded with Morristown’s Bob Largman as team leader and former Ukrainians Yury Gelman and Arkady Burdan as coaches. The competition ended on Sunday, Aug. 17. In keeping with tradition, we all had Chinese food for dinner that night.
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