Sidelines
THE clang of clashing steel calls to everyone, or at least to those of us who continually sit through bad movies -- "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves," "The Three Musketeers," "Return of the Three Musketeers," "Three Musketeers and a Baby," etc. -- just to see a little sword fighting. Trading blades with a
real-life Robin HoodAnd so it is that I am at the Hawaii Open 4th Annual Fencing Classic to witness the sport of fencing, which is sword fighting, but without the risk that Leonardo DiCaprio might be involved somehow.
But of course the sport of fencing is not like the movies.
"Everybody expects the movies," says fencer Nick D'Alonzo.
The pros to actual real-life fencing are that competitors wear extremely cool helmets, which cloak each fencer's identity behind a metallic mask, and they carry swords. The cons are that there is no concession stand, and flying backflips are kept to a minimum. Also, nobody makes the mark of Zorro, or actually yells out, "En garde!" or "Taste the glint of me steely blade!" or even, "Luke, I am your father!"
And I would, upon being touched by an opponent's blade, scream, and then fake death in dramatic fashion. But that's me. I'm a traditionalist.
"My wife likes the swashbuckling," D'Alonzo says. "She always asks where the blood is. I say, 'Honey, you're about 200 years too late.'"
No, fencing is a sport now, a civilized one, concentrating on quick, precise scores. It is much like judo or karate, or to a lesser extent, tennis. "It's as much of a dance as it is a bout," says D'Alonzo, who is my favorite fencer due to his movie-like style. Scoring can be too fast, calculated by electronic touches, and scores bring everything to a disappointing halt. This can be surprisingly boring. But D'Alonzo's matches are marked with back-and-forth, parry-and-thrust action.
"It's a chess match," he says. "It's what's between the ears."
You can see this as he waltzes and feints and the blades flash and clank, and suddenly the light goes off and he has scored again. D'Alonzo is from Seattle -- "after the terrorist attacks, when we travel we say we're carrying FENCING EQUIPMENT," he says, "not swords" -- and has come all this way for this tournament. He'd hurt himself playing basketball and volleyball before settling on fencing. Then he got tennis elbow before he learned how to do it right. But at last he found the fluidity, the footwork, the quickness.
"I suppose I could have been really smart and played golf," he says between bouts. "But I like a sport with a pulse."
They're all hooked. The oldest guy here is 88, and there are teenagers, one of whom finds a way past D'Alonzo's guile, floating over his defenses for the tie-breaking touch. "It was a gazelle-like leap," D'Alonzo says. "Where did that come from?"
And he smiles. Because this is sword fighting, and even without the movie moves, even if nobody here is named D'Artagnan, even if they look silly hooked up to electronic leashes, it is still pretty cool. "The sound of steel," D'Alonzo says. "It's almost like primeval."
Zorro rides again.
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com