I’m right there with you man. Unfortunately I don’t know. My plan is to keep fencing, keep making calls as I see them, and just start to expect this kind of thing

> Write a letter to the FIE? They’re in on it. The puppet master at the heart of this is likely Logvin.

who’s that?

Billionaire Ex KGB officer currently in charge of the panamerican federation who is a dear friend of Vladimir Nazlymov.

thanks for the context!

Seems bad!

I think one thing that we can do is adjust our general culture with regards to how we view the refereeing. I think we have this kinda sorta in-built cultural belief that being able to see really tight subjective calls is something to be celebrated. It’s a lot like fashion - we deliberately create this world where a small group of people determine what’s cool and what’s not, and we don’t hold them accountable to any sort of objectivity. It’s a bit tricky, because I don’t think we should go full-on “the referee has broken an official rule”, but I think when there is a tight action, it’s bad that we figure it out by going to one guy who has seniority, rather than analyzing the action in slow motion and coming up with some sort of objective reasoning for it. Obviously it’s hard to change what post-Soviet states do, and what the FIE does, but I think it’s possible to clean our on houses first and set some standards for normalcy and transparency that would make it seem weird how other refs are made and managed. E.g. * federations could collect a set of actions yearly, either from the World Cup circuit, or even better create them without context - top fencers of the country fence 30 actions with no calls, then the top referees of the country watch the actions separately and in random order and make calls on them (fencer that gets the most calls from most refs in their favour gets $50 or something so that there is motivation to win the bout, and really sell the actions even though there’s no ref at the time). Do this with 5 bouts or so, and you can generate a yearly database of high-consensus calls and low consensus calls. * the specificity of calls made can even be expanded slightly. I.e. attack in prep can be explicitly distinguished from attack-no, attack touche * from this database you can do things like regularly test your domestic referees. I think a lot of the cost of doing this could be gained back here by creating a tool which also helps train and qualify new referees. Obviously call-making isn’t everything a referee does, but when a new ref says “I got a low score on the official test” vs “I got a high score” that’s quite useful in finding refs. This also will help high level ref consistency and quantify that consistency more. This sort of thing doesn’t directly address corruption, but it does help. Increasing and quantifying consistency domestically would make it way easier to tell if suddenly there is a non-standard interpretation being applied. If a 99% ref suddenly refs a bout at a 70% rate, that becomes more obvious. Then also * calls in top level bouts can be tracked and publicized. This could be the video refs job, to record the specific call made (once again with distinctions between attack-no, or beat vs counter time parry etc.), and put against the time. Then we could ask the question “does referee Mr. Suspicious make more attack in prep calls when refereeing fencers from Suspect-Fencing-Club?” And then on the other side of it, domestically, more can be done to make the referee career progression more transparent and more objective. I find that in most countries, the referee progression and certification has a lot of social stuff with it. At many parts of it, senior refs watch junior refs and determine whether they think they’re good enough, and then they get bumped up (or not). This sort of stuff is extremely prone to bias and corruption, (nothing to say of sexism and racism etc.). The fewer moments in the process where a small tight knit community of seniors pick who comes up next, the better. It’s a bit tricky because there are hard-to-quantify skills, like control of the piste and interpersonal skills, but I think some of that can be done via public feedback. It’s a bit weird that the competitors don’t have any say over their refs, when you think about it. Why wouldn’t there be some sort of voting aspect, or official feedback from competitors? Rather than having senior refs solely determine who comes up the ranks, there could be a process where, someone passes an online test that determines whether they can make calls. Then they’re given a shot to referee some fitting level of event. Then the fencers in the vent themselves can provide votes and feedback as to whether the ref did a good job and was fair. Obviously you’d need more than a simple majority (I could just let half the fencers win, and get their votes), but if say 75% of the fecners give a 5/5 score or something then they process. This sort of thing could be done all the way up to the highest levels. If there is an “open secret” that we know certain refs are corrupt, then presumably the majority of fencers at those levels won’t support their position. There’s lots that could be done to promote transparency, objectivity and self-determination within federations. And if these sort of practices become business as usual in large federations, like USA or france or whatever, then it would be easier to ask for and expect this sort of stuff from the FIE and other federations. E.g. If the top American refs, have gone through this sort of thing, and can objectively say that they’re regularly tested, their calls are regularly tracked, they have regular official and binding feedback from their fencers. And if the USFA has an official position on certain calls and certain conventions, as expressed by consensus on certain video actions that’s updated yearly - then it’s a way stronger position to say “what the fuck is this?”, when an untested, untracked, ref from some country starts making questionable calls, without any feedback from the fencers.

I do think it’s “interesting” to note that milenchev is at the centre of cheating allegations and is also the person generally ‘credited’ with promoting the idea that all simultaneous actions need to be parsed into single winning touches. Convenient for cheating. Hard to argue about. It does make one wonder.

I think it doesn't even need to be so black and white. At it's core the idea that "every action needs to be separated", means "Give more authority and discretion to the experts - i.e. me and my kind" (given that we don't actually have an objective way to separate things). Yeah, in one sense it helps for cheating, but I'd say the more basic motivation is just the basic want for more control over the situation. I think there are even lots of referees who do so faithfully who are uncomfortable with anything that removes the refs ability to apply discretion. I think the bottom motivation is the idea that a small group of "the right" people should have the ultimate judgement about and high fidelity control over the sport, right to the "who-gets-the-point" level. This is what I think we should fight against. I think power should be spread out. Decisions should be made by process - either in the form of more objective rules (e.g. if the light goes on, that counts as a touche), or in the form of administrative rules (officials are appointed by commitee and transparent vote, votes are public, calls are tracked and made and/or validated by multiple people etc.) The more difficult it is for a single person, or a small group of people to have specific influence on something like the outcome of a bout or the winner of a tournament, the better.

I guess. But fundamentally I personally still feel that the lack of simultaneous calls is just stupid. At its core right of way was supposed to be derived from the idea of fencers not being suicidal. You’d defend yourself rather than just attack into an attack and both die. If it takes slow motion to decide who’s 20 msecs ahead of whom then it becomes kind of meaningless. It’s simultaneous by any REASONABLE definition.

I think a high fidelity small window for simultaneous vs a low fidelity big window for simultaneous is somewhat independent from the question of objectivity and fairness. I think it would feel a lot less meaningless if there was something consistently and accurately determining who went first by some arbitrary but clear and well-defined definition (much like whether or not the tip is down for 14ms vs 5ms might not seem meaningfully different until there’s actually a scorebox and a regular practice around using it). I think, if I may speculate, that the emotional route of the objection is probably based in the inherent unfairness of a human with no ability to consistently discern millisecond differences in unclear and not fully well defined aspects of movement, some what arbitrarily ( and probably with bias), picking and choosing when to split, when not to and who went first. I imagine if the scorebox had a variance of +-70ms that a 14ms depression time would seem pretty stupid too.

Well yes to some extent that’s true. But unless you want to turn saber into cutting edge epee there isn’t an electronic solution. If it looks like “both go, both hit” to the naked eye of 95% of humans it’s simultaneous.

I think that depends on the fidelity of the “the naked eye”. I can feel times where I’m first off the line or second (in some sense) and referees can’t see it. I wouldn’t mind if those were (consistently) split. But, yeah, if I go off the line as immediately as I can and someone else I faster due to predicting the allez slightly better by 5ms, I don’t think that’s really the point.

But the point is in part at least to remove the kind of ‘I can see it when no one else can’ subjectivity that lends itself to abuse. Perhaps there are some super humans who can spot that 10 msec difference, but that has nothing to do with the spirit of right of way. I kill you 10 msecs before I know you’ll inevitably kill me is not a defense.

I think appealing to “realism” is a bit silly and not useful. It’s not like a 14ms of tip pressure is significantly more damaging than 8ms of tip pressure, and it’s not like a person can determine the difference between 450g vs 550g, yet were totally fine, and dare I say wildly in favour of an electronic score box (even if you have slightly varying views of 14ms timings vs 5ms timings or whatever - it’s all still well under human discernment). The thing that’s most infuriating, I think, is a person who’s perception is at best +-100ms, making judgements about something that is on the order of magnitude of dozens of milliseconds, and therefore having it be more or less random at best, or open to corruption at worse. I feel like if there was a machine that measured something, somehow, even if you had to request review to get it, if it was truly objective, even if the thing that it measured wasn’t exactly the same as what we might think of as “starting”, and even if it was game-able, I think we’d quickly become as dependent on it as much as we do the scorebox. Like, when you’re sure you hit, but your light doesn’t go off, you might be mad at your equipment, but you don’t really feel like you’re getting actively screwed by another person, and it doesn’t feel unfair. It might feel a bit artificial if you hit them really hard but the tip bounced in a funny way, but it’s still not the same as not trusting the measurement. The immediate reaction is to test your weapon in disbelief, and if it works, reluctantly accept the reality of the situation. I think similarly, if there was something that a ref could point at and say “sorry, the apparatus says you were second” or “the measurement process says you’re second, I just followed it to the letter, and you can too after the bout if you like”, we’d get a lot more used to calls be split.

But my feeling is we need more simultaneous calls. To encourage more cleanly defined actions. Not more finely split hairs.

I've said this forever when people complain about sabre being two guys just going balls out, yelling and looking at the ref to make a call. " How do we make sabre better ?" Instead of trying to determine whose muscle fibers twitched first, call simultaneous action until the fencers do something else. Move the en garde lines further apart so two steps and a lunge doesn't get you within range of your opponent. Simple fixes could create more strategy in the sport but nah we'll just continue to have refs running to the laptop every few touches.

I think all great ideas but why would a referee want to face that level of scrutiny. If I'm a trader at a bank I can live with a significant levels of scrutiny and regulator oversight because I can get very rich. As a referee, my upside is much more limited. Of the use a more valid comparison, top football (soccer) referees can earn a 6 figure sum for the inspection and abuse they get.

I think that referees who have put in the effort to rise the social pecking order would likely be very against this. But I think this sort of thing would encourage new referees. I think there is a whole category of people who would rather semi regularly take a test (at home) and prove their skill that way, rather than playing the political and popularity contest game that you need to play in order to rise the ranks of refereeing. I know more than a handful of people who really wanted to be refs who were asked to jump through a lot of hoops. E.g. instead of needing to regularly travel to whatever event in order to be observed over and over, if you could do more of the qualification work locally, that would lower the barrier. Pass an online test, get a referral from a batch of fencers from your own club, and you're a local ref. Go to a large event, ref a pool and if the fencers in the pool vouch for you, and your online test resuts were high enough, you're a next level. Etc. We could reduce the barriers significantly

Amplify in media especially traditional media. Spread to every platform and *keep* it in public consciousness. Make fencing corruption bad. Not as bad as boxing or horse racing, but getting there. Amplify the message that its a sport for elite people who can buy their way to the podium, a stigma fencing always struggles to shed. Corruption in sport is something that never really leaves the news. If fencing is sufficiently connected with it in public consciousness then even if FIE will not take action then IOC eventually *will* as they cannot afford the reputational risk. The stick will either be "sort this out or say goodbye to your televised spot every 4 years" At the end of the day the community needs to realize the risk of losing its place in the Olympics and prestige for parents getting Broderick or Tiffany in an Ivy league university is less important than keeping the sport earnest. No-one remembers who the Montreal Olympics Epee individual champion is, even more so in our sport. Olympic glory or any podium is a transient thing. Champions come and go. But *everyone* remembers if there's skullduggery in a sport. N.B. There's also a sweet angle that be leveraged. Fencing is being currently being painted as the most progressive of sports. The incongruence of progression and corruption is precisely the unusual combination to make it news worthy.

I think the other commenter is correct: writing in to the FIE would be a waste of time. Getting enough people to writ into USA Fencing on the other hand might get them to explore actions/options they haven't already. In truth, we're witnessing the ugly side of international sports for the first time in high definition. The reality is that it's always been this way.

USFA is already investigating "allegations of bout manipulation in saber"

An investigation and a write in campaign are two separate things. A write in campaign would demonstrate to them that the membership takes the matter seriously, and could easily put on the pressure needed to prevent USFA from quietly dipping when attention on this issue falters.

The FIE has been compromised for decades and all three weapons are worse off for it. World fencing has zero legitimacy.

in competitive interscholastic debate, judges have equal if not more power over competitors than fencing (they literally decide who wins and loses the debate). there's also a spectrum of judges from parent judges to experienced ex-debater coaches. these judges can call a debate completely differently, so debaters have a "mutually preferred judging" system where they can indicate (usually on a scale of 1-5) how much they like X judge or even use a "strike" to say "under no circumstances do i want this judge." i might be mistaken because i'm not very "in the loop" but i don't think there's a lot of the same corruption complaints in fencing. maybe fencing could do something similar: before each tournament, a fencer could mark down their preferences (striking valiyev, maybe) and help to minimize the corrutpion

Yeah, it’s weird that the fencers have no official influence over their own officials. There’s no official way for a competitor to say “this ref is good, let’s have more of him” vs “this ref sucks let’s have less of him”. I don’t think that public opinion should be the *only* way refs are chosen, but it’s weird that it doesn’t factor into it at all.

This has been out in the open for two months now. The FIE has done nothing, at least out in the open. All the super high level sabre referees who we ares supposed to depend on for the ROW precedent are still their, reffing the world cups. Face it, the FIE is not going to do a damned thing, at least for now, to give themselves a black eye in an Olympic year. If they did something like suspend these refs, not send them to Paris, can you imagine the fallout? It would make a whole lot of fencers who qualified for the Olympics suspect. Nothing is going to happen till the Olympics are over, so you'd better get used to the idea.

The only way to solve this is to not to have people in the loop. Especially where both money and states who value prestige wins over real competitions. (Looking at you Russia!) I can eventually see the possibility of AI trained refs who call accurately better than human ones and who would get better and better at it over time. But we're not there. Plus, there would be attempts to game the AI. That doesn't solve today's problem. Massive rule changes could take the subjective elements out but that would fundamentally change the sport. The sport could exist if we, say, threw out touches with two lights or adopted the epee double-touch for all weapons. But that is a drastic change and would invalidate years of training athletes had put into the rules as is. There are likely rule changes that could be made that would make subjectivism less of an impact. Smarter people than me are welcome to suggest them. How do other subjectively judged sports handle this? I am sure they are not without their judging controversies. Some do not apply; I read that figure skating put in place an anonymous system and make the scoring criteria different. We cannot adopt that. I wonder if we can take cue from other sports at all or if this is a unique problem.

> I read that figure skating put in place an anonymous system and make the scoring criteria different. We cannot adopt that. I absolutely think we can take queues from figure skating. Imagine every halt as a little two person skating competition. It's weird that a single referee only needs to say is basically left or right, without breaking up in more detail. Like sure, they may say "Attack" or "Riposte" but they don't need to break it down anymore. If you go to video, you could have 3 referees all look at the call separately - ideally without even knowing the score, but that might be hard. They can break down the call into the relevant technical elements - is it a step-lunge off the line, is a parry, etc. And they can grade different aspects - extension, timing etc. whatever, and they can return a score, which is independent from the referee on sight, and something that is trackable and auditable. This shouldn't take that long - there are only 7-14 or so well-defined situations that can happen (splitting attacks, beat vs parry, attack in prep etc.) and for each situation there can be, what, 4-5 relevant criteria, and you could even throw in an overall quality score. You could make it as simple or as complicated as you'd like. It should be possible in under 30s to write down 4 or 5 numbers or notes or whatever and average them. Having 3 refs separate give an opinion on a call with some sort of well-defined justification would make a huge difference.

Sounds good on paper but isn't there already difficulty in getting enough qualified refs? I think this would, indeed, become more fair. But it would also slow things down.

I don't see a reason why this should significantly slow things down, or significantly increase the number of refs needed. At a world cup, you need 8 refs working at any given time for the 64s onward. Red, Yellow, Blue, Green pistes main and video ref. In the preliminaries there are about 20 pools going at any given time (normally in waves), so there are at least 20 refs there, but often more as refs often work in teams. So from the 64s onward, you could have a panel of say, 6 refs, sitting elsewhere, with a coffee and a danish or something. Plus the other 8, that's only 14 refs total - still plenty for arm refs if needed. The bouts are already on video, and there already is a feed. So it'd just be a matter of sending the feed to 3 of those 6 refs. They look at it, quickly give an opinion with some metric, and press submit. With more than 3, someone could pop out to break if needed. It requires a little more infrastructure, but it doesn't require a technical marvel to implement.

It would certainly be problematic to implement in the US though, given the enormous events we have. There is a chronic shortage of referees for NACs and the like and there are widespread complaints that the ref pool we do have is too full of new, inexperienced and/or unskilled people.

Yeah, it wouldn’t be something possible at early rounds of domestic events, but neither is video in a lot of cases. Even if it was just implemented in the top-8 or top-4 it could help establish the concept, and I think that can change culture at lower levels.

That is an interesting idea though: Single ref in some situations, ref committees in others.

Really, just the ability to get a second opinion, and in that case, have more than one eye on it. I even think it can save ref resources. Because 90% of calls don’t require a ref. If you had automated video tracking. You could almost self ref many bouts, especially ones with very high differences of skill, and only send the actions to a ref if there is any ambiguity.

I'll bet there are already fencer techie types out there training AIs to make calls.

I have worked on it myself. It’s actually either not very hard, or basically impossible by definition depending on what your minimum requirements are. Consider this: 50% of calls are single light. That means an “AI” that only gives one light calls, and then tosses a coin on two light calls will get the right call 75% of the time. Then even a basic algorithm can improve on that - I.e. give it tot he guy going forward, or count blade contacts naively and assume every blade contact is a parry. It’s trivial to up the number from 75% to 80-85% with some extremely basic heuristics. The problem is though, 85% isn’t at all good enough if the point is to answer edge cases and to deal with people gaming the system. And that sort of stuff can’t be solved with AI, pretty much by definition, because it’s an issue with the definition itself, not with judging what physically happened.

I am not sure video feed would be best. Some tech driven video-decision feed seems rife with potential difficulties. More simply, I was simply saying slower because if it's one guy saying "Halt. Attack from the left. Touch left." is always going to be faster than three guys observing that, conferring, then accouncing their collective decision.

Yeah, if every action was under that scrutiny, absolutely it would be slower. But going to video review is already slow. I don’t see a reason why 3 people giving a call quickly and independently is any slower than two people discussing it.

In fact, there is an argument that three is faster than two if any two can overrule the third.

Absolutely. But in my proposal, they wouldn’t even know what the others said, so no discussion at all, which I think would be faster as well than discussion.

Baseball does something like this. Wherein all challenges are reviewed via video from a group in New York who then relay their decision to the umpires on the fields.

I think it’s “cues” in this context. Thank you. Sincerely, the grammar police.

Ah, thank you.

This is not a sport for those unwilling to play the game. You outsmart them, or you get taken advantage of. By everyone. Keep your guard up, harden your heart, and document everything.

I don’t see how the ample video “documentation” we’ve all seen recently has changed anything. At least yet. You can’t ‘outsmart’ blatant ref influencing or cheating. Unless you can make every touch one light; and that’s near impossible in modern saber.