Fencing at the 2020 Summer Olympics

Dates 24 July – 1 August 2021
Medal Events 12

As a condition for allowing women’s sabre to be added to the Olympic program in 2004, the International Olympic Committee required that fencing hold only four of the six possible team events at each Olympics. The Fédération Internationale d’Escrime (FIE) rotated the two team events that were not held at each Olympics with women’s foil and women’s sabre being the first two not held in 2004. The IOC finally approved the holding of all six team event at each Olympics beginning with the 2020 Olympics and so this was the first Olympics where all six team events were held. A total of 245 fencers from 47 nations took part at Makuhari Messe in Tokyo.

For the team events, eight teams qualified in each event. Each team had to be composed of at least three fencers. The top four ranked teams qualified. The next-best ranked team from each zone (Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Oceania) qualified as long as it was ranked in the top 16. If a zone did not have any teams ranked between fifth and 16th, the best-placed team not already qualified was selected regardless of the corresponding zone.

Each team was then allowed to specify a fourth fencer as a “reserve athlete” who could be used only in the team event and who could be substituted in for one of the team members in case of injury or for strategic reasons. If the team won a medal, the reserve athletes would receive the medal only if they had been substituted in.

For individual events, the three fencers from the team event qualified for individual competition automatically. Six more places were awarded based on the rankings (ignoring fencers from countries with team qualifications, and considering only the top fencer from each country): the top two fencers from each of Europe and Asia-Oceania, and the top fencer from each of Americas and Africa, qualified. Four more places (one per zone) were awarded through zone qualifying tournaments; only countries without a qualified fencer in an event were eligible to participate in these zone qualifying tournaments.

In addition, the host country of Japan was allowed a certain number of wild-card qualifiers that they could use as long as the number of Japanese fencers in each of the six individual events did not exceed three fencers. If this resulted in the number of fencers in an individual event being three, Japan was also allowed to enter a team in the team event for that weapon. This happened in men’s sabre, men’s epee, women’s sabre, and men’s foil, increasing the number of teams in those weapons to nine.

The format of the individual events was a single-elimination bracket with a bronze medal bout. Fencing was done to 15 touches or to the completion of three three-minute rounds if neither fencer reached 15 touches by then. At the end of time, the higher-scoring fencer was the winner; a tie resulted in an additional one-minute sudden-death time period. Before the start of this one-minute period, one of the two fencers was randomly selected as having “priority” and if neither fencer scored a touch during the minute, the fencer with priority won the bout.

The format of the team events was a single-elimination bracket with classification matches for all places starting with the round of eight. For the four team events with nine entries, the eighth and nineth seeded teams fenced one match to determine which team would advance into the round of eight. The team that lost this match fenced no further matches.

Each match consisted of three-minute bouts with each of the three fencers on one team fencing one bout with each of the fencers on the other team. The first two fencers in a match fenced until one scored five touches or the time expired. The second two fencers started with the score at the end of that bout and fenced until one had a score of ten touches or the time expired. Each subsequent bout was fenced the same way with the fencers taking over the score at the end of the previous bout and fencing until the score of one of the fencers equaled the limiting score for that bout (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) or time expired. The winning team was the one that reached 45 total points first or was leading when time expired at the end of the ninth bout.

As in Rio 2016, the most successful nation was Russia, now competing as the Russian Olympic Committee, who won three gold, four silver and one bronze medal. In Tokyo, France came second with five medals including two gold, two silver and one bronze. They were followed by five nations winning one gold medal: Korea, Hungary (in their most traditional weapon men’s sabre), Estonia, the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and China. One of the biggest losers like in Rio 2016 was Germany, who did not bring home a medal of any color for the second time since they boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Events

Event Status Date Participants NOCs
Foil, Individual, Men Olympic 26 July 2021 35 18
Foil, Team, Men Olympic 1 August 2021 34 9
Épée, Individual, Men Olympic 25 July 2021 36 18
Épée, Team, Men Olympic 30 July 2021 34 9
Sabre, Individual, Men Olympic 24 July 2021 36 18
Sabre, Team, Men Olympic 28 July 2021 36 9
Foil, Individual, Women Olympic 25 July 2021 34 18
Foil, Team, Women Olympic 29 July 2021 32 8
Épée, Individual, Women Olympic 24 July 2021 34 18
Épée, Team, Women Olympic 27 July 2021 32 8
Sabre, Individual, Women Olympic 26 July 2021 36 18
Sabre, Team, Women Olympic 31 July 2021 35 9
261 (133/128) 42 (30/30)

Medals

Event Gold Silver Bronze
Foil, Individual, Men Edgar CheungHKG Daniele GarozzoITA Alexander ChoupenitchCZE
Foil, Team, Men FranceFRA ROCROC United StatesUSA
Épée, Individual, Men Romain CannoneFRA Gergely SiklósiHUN Ihor ReizlinUKR
Épée, Team, Men JapanJPN ROCROC Republic of KoreaKOR
Sabre, Individual, Men Áron SzilágyiHUN Luigi SameleITA Kim Jeong-HwanKOR
Sabre, Team, Men Republic of KoreaKOR ItalyITA HungaryHUN
Foil, Individual, Women Lee KieferUSA Inna DeriglazovaROC Larisa KorobeynikovaROC
Foil, Team, Women ROCROC FranceFRA ItalyITA
Épée, Individual, Women Sun YiwenCHN Ana Maria PopescuROU Katrina LehisEST
Épée, Team, Women EstoniaEST Republic of KoreaKOR ItalyITA
Sabre, Individual, Women Sofiya PozdnyakovaROC Sofya VelikayaROC Manon BrunetFRA
Sabre, Team, Women ROCROC FranceFRA Republic of KoreaKOR

Medal table

NOC Gold Silver Bronze Total
ROC ROC 3 4 1 8
France FRA 2 2 1 5
Republic of Korea KOR 1 1 3 5
Hungary HUN 1 1 1 3
Estonia EST 1 0 1 2
United States USA 1 0 1 2
Hong Kong, China HKG 1 0 0 1
Japan JPN 1 0 0 1
People's Republic of China CHN 1 0 0 1
Italy ITA 0 3 2 5
Romania ROU 0 1 0 1
Czechia CZE 0 0 1 1
Ukraine UKR 0 0 1 1