IN-HOUSE
En garde!
For several lawyers around the country, their athletic passion centres on a sport that can trace its origins back to the battlefields of yore, Craig Sisterson discovers
It may sound silly, but the sport of fencing is very like the sport of tennis, says Anderson Lloyd partner Barry Dorking. “You’re slowly leading your opponent into making a mistake.” Dorking is one of several lawyers who fence in Dunedin, and many who do so throughout the country. “There are a lot of lawyers who fence,” says Dorking. “Fencing has always been a strong university sport, and a lot of the university fencers are law students. The legal mind applies quite well to fencing. It’s often been described as physical chess.”
“The point about fencing is that it’s one sport where it requires a mixture of skills, so it’s not just the strongest, it’s not just the fastest, it’s not just the cleverest,” says Roger Hayman, founding partner of Hayman Lawyers in Wellington, a firm that has a fencer in action as its logo. “You have to be capable in all those areas to be successful, but you can still be a successful fencer if you’re small and not that strong, if you’re cunning and fast. With fencing, it’s not necessarily the most athletic person or the strongest person who’s going to win – there’s a considerable mental element. It’s about deceiving your opponent, and even though they may be bigger and have longer limbs than you have, it’s still possible to beat someone like that, so it’s a great challenge.”
Both Dorking and Hayman were first introduced to fencing as high school students, Dorking at Selwyn College in Auckland, and Hayman at Wellington College. One of the teachers at Selwyn was in the New Zealand fencing team, and within a couple of years of first picking up a sword as a 15 year old, Dorking made the Auckland senior team and started going to national tournaments. One of the reasons fencing has appealed to him over the years is that it’s a sport that’s accessible to people of all ages, he says. “I was competitive at a provincial level from the age of about 17 through to 40-something. But I still fence now, and there are a lot of fencers my age… You can actually do it and do it well for decades, because as you lose physical prowess, you develop the mental skills.”
Hayman also had a good first teacher; his coach at Wellington College was the late Justice Tony Ellis. “He ran that club on his own, and taught us.” For Hayman, who is now the patron of Fencing Central, the appeal of fencing was very simple: “I think it was a bit about the romance of playing with swords, and you know, the old way of doing things, just the romance of duelling with swords.”
There are three types of swords used in the sport of fencing, or three different “weapons”, as practitioners like Dorking and Hayman call them: the foil, the epee, and the sabre. Each weapon requires a different technique and approach, and fencers may find themselves drawn to one over the others for any number of reasons. Traditionally, women only fought with the foil, says Hayman, but now all three weapons are available to both sexes. “I specialise in epee, which is sort of like the duelling weapon,” says Dorking. “The sword is different, but also the rules are different. So, in foil, which is the practice weapon for duelling, there are all sorts of rules which are potentially to do with staying alive. The epee is the duelling weapon, and there are essentially no rules. So if you hit your opponent, you score a point. And that’s basically the only rule of epee. In epee, if you both hit each other at the same time, you both score a point, you’re both dead.”
The scoring is also different with the different weapons. The foil and epee are both “poking weapons”, says Dorking. “The sabre is like a cavalry sabre, although it’s a lot lighter now, and that was for chopping people. With the saber, you can score with the point, but you mainly score with the edges, where with the foil and epee, you score with the point, so the technique is different.”
Hayman, who fights with the foil, gives pointers on such technique to youngsters at Club Toa, which is run out of the gym at the local high school in Wellington. “The oldies like us just come along and fence, as long as we give a few bouts to the juniors, and teach them a few tricks, they welcome the veterans to come along, and just take part,” he says. “I attend the club every Saturday morning and fence for an hour and a half and then go to the pub for a drink.” Although he doesn’t take part in official competitions much any more, Hayman did recently place third in the open division at a tournament to celebrate the centennial of his old Victoria University club. He laughs that he won a $25 gift voucher, but had to spend several times that on the physio, following his efforts.
Fencing bouts consist of three three-minute rounds. A clean hit scores a point, and the winner is the first to 15 points, or the fencer on the highest points at the end of the three rounds. Hayman’s club, like most around the country, uses electronic sensors for scoring. Dorking’s club in Dunedin, Sal Angelo (named after legendary Italian fencing master Domenico Angelo, whose descendants live in Dunedin), is a rarity – it still operates ‘classic fencing’, where points are scored visually, without the aid of electronic sensors. “What’s happened over the decades is that the use of electronic scoring devices has actually changed the sport,” says Dorking. “It’s now a more physical speed sport, rather than cunning and accuracy.” The electronic sensors pick up light touches, so fencers have changed their technique to “flick the point” on their opponent. “If it had been sharp, your opponent might have just got a scratch, but it scores a point,” says Dorking. “There’s quite a number of us who just don’t enjoy that, so we fence under the old rules. You’ve actually got to hit your opponent cleanly and with sufficient force that the judges can visually see it.” Not that they see it when it’s your point, he adds with a chuckle. “Then they’re all as blind as bats. But that’s all part of the sport.”
A sport many lawyers enjoy.
NZLawyer magazine, issue 141, 23 July 2010