Athlete Profile

• Name: Tom Harvey
• College: Queens’
• Degree: Law – 3rd Year
• Hometown: Truro

Tom Harvey is a renowned fencer. He has competed on the national circuit, gaining a place in the Team GB under-17 squad, and also held the South West Regional under-16 and under-18 titles for two years each. Tom fights with both sabre and épée and was part of the Cambridge team that has won the last two Varsity matches against Oxford with a clean sweep across all the events. Last year, he was President of the Cambridge University Fencing Club.

Can you give us a brief overview of fencing?

The central aim is to stick them before they stick you! But that aim is slightly more nuanced, in the sense that there are three different weapons (the sabre, the foil and the épée) with three different sets of rules. For example, only the point can be used with the foil and the épée but the sabre allows you to hit with either the point or the cutting edge. And the targets you’re aiming at are different too: the épée is the whole body, the sabre is only above the waist and the foil is the torso only! The rule of priority exists in foil and sabre too – if both fencers score a hit at the same time, the fencer with priority (the person who is going forward, in simple terms) scores the point – but doesn’t in épée.

While there are certain basic principles and techniques that are the same across all three weapons, there are significant differences in the way you execute moves and the way your footwork changes too.

A fencing match takes place on a long strip of floor called the piste. In individual competitions, a group stage where everyone fences everyone is first to five, which is followed by a seeded knockout round which is first to 15. However, in team competitions, you fence in a relay with three people on each team and it’s first to 45. And in university competitions, we take it a stage further: all three weapons are fought in a 45-hit relay, though the score resets, which makes for really interesting mathematical scenarios that can really change the matches!

How did you first get into fencing?

I was actually fairly late to the party: a lot of my friends got involved in primary school because my local club does an outreach scheme to nearby schools. I finally got the option to try it as a 13-year-old, and what teenage boy doesn’t like the idea of playing with swords as a sport! After a while, I started attending training with the proper club, then started going to competitions – it just continued from there.

I really loved the fact that fencing is not just a sport where you get the general physical benefits of exercise, but also it’s very intellectual: every time you fence, you’re up against a new opponent and you have to change and adapt your game to their game. It’s about reading and understanding how they fence and combating new styles and new strategies to try and win the next point.

What is the hardest thing about the sport?

Personally, it’s about managing emotions. If you don’t stay cool during a fight, you’ll inevitably lose it. But the hits will come naturally if you’re in control. And when it comes to something like the Varsity match, where you have 400 or 500 people close to you and screaming support for you or your opponent, that’s a lot of pressure. You can either ride that wave or you can freak!

What traits helps facilitate success in the sport?

When it comes to physical attributes, there’s a myth about a need to be tall for an extra reach. Actually, because fencing is a martial art, it can be personalised to you so whatever shape you are, you can adapt the basic fundamental of movements to what works for you and develop your own strategy. Indeed, watching two very different physically shaped people can be a fascinating match.

I would say it’s more about your personality and what you want to get out of the sport – if you want your sport to include an intellectual element and get excited about the entirety of a mental game, then fencing is definitely going to be for you.

Who is the most famous athlete in fencing?

It’s difficult to say because it’s an individual sport and there are three weapons, so there are a lot of different characters on the circuit. But there’s a Russian high up in the sabre rankings called Aleksey Yakimenko: though he had a bad performance at Rio 2016, he’s usually such an impressive fencer who everyone admires, despite being the bad guy of the circuit that everybody also loves to hate. There are some insane Koreans like Kim Jung-Hwan who have come out of nowhere in the last few years and are completely dominant because they do things that physically look impossible and have this amazing energetic way of fencing.

Two truly inspirational fencers worth noting are Ibtihaj Muhammad, who won her first Olympic medal at Rio 2016 whilst also becoming the first American athlete to compete at the Olympic Games wearing a hijab, and an Italian foilist called Valentina Vezzali, who was Italy’s flag-bearer at the 2012 Opening Ceremony. For Vezzali, Rio was the first Olympics she couldn’t make but she’s 42 years old, has won six gold medals and managed to be at the top of the sport for all those years too despite also being a Member of Parliament and a mum!

What is the state of the sport in Cambridge, in the UK, and internationally?

At Cambridge, we’re pretty large with about 165 members overall, and we do incredibly well: we’ve had a clean sweep in Varsity for the last two seasons and have a very strong team spirit that helps us win as well as some incredible work behind the scenes. In fact, we’re the best university club in the country – we regularly win BUCS and over the last 10 years, there's been only one or two finals that didn’t feature a Cambridge team in either gender. We’ve had some really impressive members, from the 11-time Nordic women’s sabre champion to people who've been selected to represent England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

On a national level, in terms of participation, numbers seem to be increasing and competitions are reasonably well attended. Team GB did very well at the Olympics: though we didn’t win a medal, we got Richard Kruse finishing in 4th place and the team lost to Russia in the quarter-finals in controversial circumstances!

But on the world stage, Britain is not known as a powerhouse of the sport – the old traditional ‘schools’ are France and Italy, with Hungary and Russia not far behind. And then there are newer schools: the USA introduced a new, distinct way of fencing, and even more recently the Far Eastern nations like South Korea have exploded onto the scene too.

What is your training schedule like?

Next year, because I fight with the sabre, I’ll be having two sabre-specific fencing sessions a week, plus a mixed session with some others. I’ll also have at least one fitness training session a week too!

How do you reconcile a Cambridge workload and your training schedule?

With great skill! You have to be organised and plan – you have to say, ‘I need to get this job done in this time’ and work on that basis. But actually, I find that it can be quite motivating to use deadlines as an incentive to get things done.

How might somebody interested in fencing get involved?

They would get involved via the Cambridge University Fencing Club. Beginners can visit our stand at the Freshers’ Fair or contact the beginners’ secretary Hugo Smith (hjds2@cam.ac.uk), and we’ll invite you to attend our beginner’s training course, which is probably the best in the country. We work towards a Varsity for novices in Lent term against Oxford, but the course lasts the entire year. Once you’ve completed that you then become a fully-fledged fencer, though you are still eligible to compete in beginner’s fencing competitions around the country.

For experienced fencers or those who just want to know more, we have a website and a Facebook page with more information. But if anyone has any specific questions about fencing, they can email me (twh38@cam.ac.uk) too!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.