Fencing: Right of Way London

The "right of way" principle in foil and sabre is that the first person to properly execute an attack has priority. Simply put, if one is attacked, one must defend oneself before counterattacking - rather than attempting to hit one's opponent even at the risk of being hit oneself.

Attacks can be made to fail either by bad luck, misjudgement or by action on the part of the defender. A properly executed parry (deflecting the incoming attack with one's own blade) causes priority to change and the defender has the opportunity to attack (riposte). The original attacker must counterparry the defender's riposte before attacking again, but if the parry is ineffectual (malparry, or counter parry), if the riposte misses, or the defender hesitates before riposting, the attacker can continue his attack (this can be called a remise, a reprize or a redoublement) without counterparrying. None of these actions (remise reprize or redoublment) has the right of way so if the defending fencer hesitates that will be called a counterattack and will receive the touch.

For instance, if one fencer attacks, and the other immediately counter-attacks into the attack, and each hits the other, the first fencer's attack is considered successful, while the second is considered to have misjudged. If, however, the second fencer parried the first attack and then responded with an attack of his own (or if he had counter-attacked and managed to avoid being touched), they would have taken the right of way away from the first fencer. It would then be incumbent on the first fencer to defend themselves.

When electrical scoring equipment is used in the modern sports of foil and sabre,(there is electrical épée scoring as well) both fencers will register a hit if they contact within a certain time of each other. Then the referee must decide who had right of way at the time of the hits, and therefore who gets a point. If the referee cannot tell, then he will declare the touches null, and restart the bout from where it stopped.

Double hits are possible in épée as well, but only if both fencers contact within a very short timeframe (40 milliseconds, or 1/25th of a second). In this case, both fencers will receive a point.