This year, at the London 2012 Olympics, 212 athletes (105 men, 107 women) will participate in the sport of fencing. They are competing in ten different events, including individual Epée, foil, and sabre, as well as team events.
And today, Google is honoring the legendary sport of fencing with a Google Doodle, as part of their Olympic Doodle series.
Fencing is one of the few events to have been part of every modern Olympic games. The sport has been around for hundreds of years, but fencing as we see it contested today is a product of the 19th century. While watching fencing during the 2012 Summer games, you’ll notice that much of the language of the sport is French. That’s been the case since the mid-1500s, when a Frenchman named Henri de Saint-Didler basically wrote the book on the sport.
As it stands today, Italy is winning the fencing competition with a total of four medals – one gold, two silver, and one bronze. Hungary and Russia both have one medal each. Of course, there’s still a lot of fencing to go in the 2012 games, as the athletes will be taking to the Piste until August 5th.