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We finally have it!

Fencing Footage is donating $5 from every sale of this video to the Peter Westbrook Foundation (Click here for Peter Westbrook Foundation Web site). By purchasing this video, you are actively helping one of the most progressive and productive fencing programs in the world.

This is the apocryphal Olympic footage from Los Angeles, 1984, which features the United State's Peter Westbrook winning the Bronze Medal. It also contains the epic 12-11 bout where France's Lamour won the Gold versus Italy's Marin.

This is professionally shot footage, with names and scores overlayed. There are multiple camera angles, and the best touches have slow-motion repeats. The audio is questionable, going muddy at times so that mainly the blade exchanges, cheers, and some of the director's calls are audible. The video, however, is first rate. (At 9 minutes in, there is a 1-second blurt of static, but it doesn't obscure any action.) If Fencing Footage is offering it, you can bet it's the best version we've found.

A lot has changed with sabre since 1984 -- no more crossovers and fleches, for one. But this is also pre-electric; the referees (one director and four side judges) are wearing bow-ties. Bouts are fenced to 10, and when a touch is scored, it's scored against a fencer: A 10-5 score means the fencer with 10 has lost. Fencers get a one-meter warning (and use it) when they reach the end of the strip. Fencers change sides at 5 touches. After a series of simultaneous actions, priority is assigned via a flipped coin. But there's more -- the FIE officials and the bout committee are wearing tuxedos behind the strip, arranged like speakers at a Friar's Roast.

It was a different world back then -- one foot seemingly still on the Titanic, when semi-Edwardian dinosaurs still dressed expensively to attend sporting events. But nowhere is the "old way" more clear than with the formalized tactics of the fencers. Priority shifts politely, mutually recognized by both fencers; attacks are honored with a rehearsed feeling bordering on Kabuki. The skill, technique and talent appears at the very end of each action, when the fencers must close, and the phrases are settled with a decisive and short exchange. And then, the fencing is emminently recognizable -- killer technique, bladework to die for.

Bronze medal bout: Peter Westbrook of USA versus Herve Granger of France.

In this bout, Peter Westbrook carries the United States into its first Olympic fencing medal since who-knows-when.

Since this bout, Westbrook has gone on to create the Westbrook Foundation, which not only brings the sport of fencing to hundreds of children annually, but has also produced fencing notables like Keeth and Emily Smart and Ankhaten Spencer-El. His present-day accomplishments were enabled, in part, by the focus, dedication and hard work that paid so handsomely in 1984.

Westbrook's focus is the first thing you notice in the bout. His calm and methodical movements, after each touch and as he takes his guard for the next, show his control of the bout. (The stillness of his guard still characterizes his fencing today.) He raises his arms after each touch, daring the judges to not call the action his way. With dry fencing, the winners know how to show the judges what they expect to see. Sabre fencing, circa 1984, seems to be a mixture of having the right 'tude, knowing exactly when to cede ground and when to take it up (and when to stop doing both), and never making a mistake -- because if you have to improvise a quick fix the judges won't see it. When the blades cross, a touch is invariably assigned, no matter how implausible it is that the judges actually saw the touch land. Wesbrook (and his opponent) were fencing 6 people on that strip -- the opponent, and 5 judges.

As the bout progresses, Granger starts to crack. He tears his mask off, he shakes his head -- he can't find any flaws to exploit. He's trying to poke a hole in a granite cliff, it's simply not happening. For his part, Westbrook stays haughty and expressionless. This all changes at the end. When the bout is over, all hell breaks loose.

Westbrook is rushed by his teammates, and hoisted into the air. All the famous faces show up on screen -- Mik'hail Sankofa (née Michael Lofton), Steve Mormando, and a few others. Touchingly, a youngish Maestro Csaba Elthes, looking as proud as his stern face can manage, speaks a few words with Westbrook. The maestro's presence creates a temporary quiet haven in the pandemonium, revealing the level of respect surrounding him. But Elthes knows what the moment needs -- he removes himself from his student's greatest moment so the celebration can continue.

The bout might not have been as touching without Westbrook's future history, but even by itself, it's a wonderful fight.

Gold Medal Bout: Jean Lamour of France versus Marco Marin of Italy.

Lamour was still fencing at least into the early 1990's. While in college, we (Fencing Footage people) watched him fence at a New York World Cup, hosted by NYU. He was still intimidating directors with his glower. He is surpassingly good -- only a highly trusted fencer would be allowed, by the side judges, to win a 4-action exchange. In this bout, he still glowers at his directors, refusing to return to the line until the call is complete. With Lamour, dignity was almost as important as skill, in getting your touches awarded.

Marin fights with a more energetic and blade-heavy style than the others. Young, slim and fast, he's unafraid to trade cuts and blocks with Lamour. Often, he is fast enough with the parry to stop Lamour's attacks. He has a wicked point in line. But Lamour is able to run the numbers, avoid the temptation of making errors and taking risks, and he steadily keeps the score ahead.

Both fencers get cut up in this bout. Lamour needs his rear hand looked at. Marin is hit with a wicked cut to the groin (we get not one, but two slow-motion replays) and collapses at the edge of the piste. The touches are contested, if not the actual calls. Marin, at one point, stares bleakly at each side-judge as they signal whether he hit or not... he knows he hit, but the point is not in his hands. (It's a sad situation to be in, but even despite this, some fencers still grumbled when sabre switched to electric.)

At 9-7 with Lamour ahead, Marin is still cool enough to land with a precise Point in Line. Through sheer force of will, and a lot of showmanship, Marin evens it to 9-9. Then 10-10. In 1984, you won by scoring 10 touches, but you had to be two ahead, or you would fence until the first fencer reached 12 touches. (Let us go on the record and say, modern fencing is infinitely more comprehensible.) At 11-11, the audience looks like it's on the verge of a riot.

This wonderful bout isn't over until the last touch is scored.

Reviewed by Walter Flaschka