Fencing at the 1896 Summer Olympics – Men's sabre

The men's sabre was one of the fencing events in the 1896 Summer Olympics. The event was on 9 April. The event was won by Ioannis Georgiadis of Greece.Telemachos Karakalos won in second place. He was also Greek. Holger Nielsen won third. He was from Denmark.

Background

This was the first time they used fencing at an Olympics. This is the only fencing event that has been at every Summer Olympics game. There were 3 Greeks who competed. The Greeks were Telemachos Karakalos, Ioannis Georgiadis, and Georgios Iatridis. There was also a Danish athlete, Holger Nielsen. There was an Austrian athlete, Adolf Schmal. The favorite athlete was Schmal.

Competition

The event had a pool-play final. Each round would be won if you touched the other players 3 times. The normal Sabre rules were used. The only difference was that you could hit the entire body. In normal Sabre rules, you could only hit above the waist. The competition had one round with all five fencers. In the round, every player played each other. This means that there were 10 matches.Official Report, p. 77.

Schedule

The sabre was in the morning of the fourth day of events.

 Date Time Round Gregorian Julian Thursday, 9 April 1896  Thursday, 28 March 1896  Morning  Final

Results

The competition started before the king and crown prince came to watch. They arrived after 2 rounds. When they arrived, the officials restarted the competition. Before the restart, Schmal had beaten Georgiadis and Nielsen. After the restart, Schmal lost to both of them.

Georgiadis never lost a round and won the gold medal. Karakalos only lost one round. Nielsen lost two matches. Schmal only won to Latridis. Latridis lost all of his matches.

References

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  (Excerpt available at  )


Men's amateur sabre