Sabre, Team, Men

Each nation was allowed one team entry of four starting competitors in the team sabre event, plus four substitutes. The Italian team listed Federico Cesarano as one of the team members but then did not use him in any of the matches. Bouts were for three touches. Because there were so few entries, the format was one round of pools. Most of the team matches at the beginning of the event were held outdoors at the Beerschot Stadium. When it began to rain, the remaining matches were moved to the indoors linoleum pistes in Floraliën, at Middelheim Park.

After the Czechoslovakian team lost three matches, they withdrew because of dissatisfaction with the officiating. On another note, the match between Italy and Great Britain was not fenced because the standings had already been decided regardless of any result in that match.

The sabre competition was missing the Hungarian fencers, because their country was not invited to the Olympics due to their role in World War I. Hungarian fencers had dominated the sabre events at London in 1908 and Stockholm in 1912. Hungary remained the dominant nation in sabre fencing through 1960. At the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Hungary began a winning streak in team sabre which did not end until 1964, and included 46 consecutive match wins and seven consecutive gold medals.

In Hungary’s absence, Italy won the team sabre event in 1920. It should be noted, however, that Italy was also quite good at this discipline, as they won the team sabre at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, even with Hungary competing, and Italy had also won the championship at the 1919 Inter-Allied Games.