Olgierd Porebski

Sabre specialist Olgierd Porebski became a naturalised Briton in January 1951. Also known as Richard, he was a member of the Polish Students Academy (AZS) team that was beaten in the final of the Great Britain Sabre Team Championship by the London Fencing Club in 1949. At the same meeting he beat a fellow Pole, K. Miszewski, into second place in the international Corble Cup tournament, named after the three-time Olympian Archie Corble. At the time, Porebski attended London University, and was a Universities’ sabre champion.

In 1951 Porebski was a member of the Sabre Club that won the Nairn Cup for the inter-cub competition, and the following year he won the first of three national sabre titles. Also in 1952, Porebski made the first of two Olympic appearances, and reached the semi-final of the team sabre event, but failed to progress out of his pool in the individual competition. He won his second national title in 1953, when he also appeared in the World Championships at Bruxelles (Brussels). Porebski reached the individual sabre quarter-final at the 1955 World Championships in Rome, having won the Corble Cup for the second time a year earlier.

A third British sabre title followed for Porebski in 1956, when he also went to his second Olympics and reached the sabre quarter-finals. A former research statistician in industrial psychology, he was living in Paris at the time of the Melbourne Games and working as a university lecturer. He competed in his third World Championships at Paris in 1957 and the following year Porebski won the Australian sabre title at the first attempt. He later emigrated to Canada where he became a professor at Ottawa University.