Bearded Bruce, those are shlagers, the source of those fancy "Heidelburg" scars favored by the bad guys in so many old movies. The whole point of the excercise is to create the scars rather to simply fence as a sport.

What I find interesting about the three women who won in sabre is that they did not come from the New York area. The salle in New York was founded by one of the first Americans to medal in sabre in the modern Olympics [sometime in the 1980's, I believe] . He trained all of the Americans who won in 2004.