My father was a Spanish opera singer and a musicologist, but his passion was the Olympic sport of fencing. He started a fencing club in the 1950s shortly after we moved from the Bronx, in New York City, to a small suburban town just outside the city to teach the sport to anyone who was interested. So, it should come as no surprise that I learned to fence when I was 10 years old. I have played a lot of other sports since I learned to fence – baseball, football, track and field, rugby, soccer, and several equestrian sports (hunter/jumpers and dressage). But I keep coming back to fencing because fencing competitions at the local, regional, national, and international levels are organized, among other things, by age. I am now 83, retired, and still fencing. I am on the coaching staff of the Cardinal Fencing Academy in Sterling, Virginia, hold a fencing referee R2 license, and I continue to compete at the local and regional levels in Combined Veteran Men’s Epee events and at the national level in the Veteran Men’s Epee 70+ and 80+ Divisions of the United States Fencing Association, our nation’s governing body for the Olympic sport of fencing.
This week, I had a wonderful experience that strikingly reinforced the fact that fencing is, indeed, a lifelong sport, and I would like to share it with my fencing friends. Back in the 1950s, France, Italy, and Hungary were the world powerhouses in Olympic fencing. One of the coaches of the Hungarian Olympic Fencing Team at that time was a gentleman by the name of Istvan Danosi. After receiving his degree from the Royal Hungarian Sport and Fencing Institute in 1935, he coached fencing in his native Hungary, leading his country’s Olympic team to 2 Gold Medals, 1 Silver Medal, and 2 Bronze Medals at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, and 3 Gold Medals, 3 Silver Medals, and 3 Bronze Medals at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.
It was during the Melbourne Olympics that the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 took place. It was a nationwide revolt against the Hungarian People's Republic government and its Soviet-imposed policies. The uprising began on October 23, 1956, and lasted until November 4, 1956, when Soviet tanks and troops crushed the rebellion in Budapest. The uprising was a response to protests led by students and intellectuals who demanded social and economic reforms. As a result, most of the Hungarian Olympic team defected. In other words, they didn’t return to Hungary and sought refuge in other countries. Maestro Danosi was among the defectors and came to New York.
The fencing community in New York rallied around Maestro Danosi and asked fencing clubs in the area to allow him to give fencing lessons at their clubs in order to earn a living. My father’s club was one of those clubs, and he agreed with the condition that Maestro Danosi would give me free lessons. So, there I was at age 15 taking fencing lessons from the then-current Hungarian Olympic Gold Medal fencing coach.
Maestro Danosi went on to become the fencing coach at Wayne State University (WSU) in Michigan and, from 1958 through 1982, led WSU to national prominence. He was the most successful coach in Michigan collegiate sports history, finishing his 24-year coaching reign with an unprecedented 283-59 record. Under his guidance, WSU won five NCAA Fencing Championships in 1975, 1979, 1980, and both the men's and women’s titles in 1982.
WSU finished in the top 10 in the nation 19 times while he was the men’s coach, along with the women’s national title in its first year in 1982. He produced 40 All-Americans and 14 National Champions, including three-time champions Greg Benko (foil) and Ernie Simon (foil), along with two-time champions Gil Pezza (epee) and Yuri Abinovich (sabre).
Maestro Danosi was chairman of the U.S. Academy of Arms (National Fencing Coaches Association). He was also on the Accreditation Committee and accredited the first woman fencing master in the United States, Muriel Bower from San Fernando State College. He was inducted into the United States Fencing Hall of Fame as well as the Wayne State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1985. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 93.
Clearly, Maestro Danosi was a major figure in Hungary’s glorious Olympic fencing history and had an enormous impact on American fencing.
Back to the present... the Cardinal Fencing Academy holds a number of fencing camps during the summer months. The biggest of those camps is the Olympic Camp, which gets its name because it is run by guest coach Maestro Sandro Cuomo, who won an Epee Team Olympic Gold Medal in 1996, 3 world titles, and 4 Italian National Championships. Maestro Cuomo also coached the Egyptian fencer, Mohamed Elsayed, to the Bronze Medal in the Men’s Individual Epee event at this year’s Olympics in Paris. Maestro Cuomo was accompanied this summer by his internationally ranked son, Fabrizio, and Hungarian fencer Gergely Siklosi, who scored the winning touch to earn Hungary the Olympic Gold Medal in the Men’s Team Epee event at the Paris Olympics this summer and added his name to the list of great Hungarian Olympic Champion fencers. This week, I had the honor and great pleasure of taking lessons from both Maestro Cuomo and Coach Siklosi.
And then it hit me. Here I was, at 83 years of age, taking a fencing lesson from Hungary’s most recent Olympic Fencing Gold Medalist almost seventy years after taking lessons from the coach of the then-current Hungarian Olympic Fencing Gold Medal Team. WOW! Fencing really is a lifelong sport. Oh, and Coach Siklosi borrowed my coach’s fencing jacket to give his private lessons, and, to be honest, I’m hoping some of his talent rubbed off on it and will stick to me when I put the jacket back on.
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