Why do the athletes for fencing yell when points are given?

Question

I was watching the Olympics earlier in the week and had an odd question. Why is it when an athlete is given a point after a hit, they yell?

Answer 1

They just wanna be like Maria Sharapova???  They were talking about it yesterday on the telly and the girl said it sounds like cats doing it in an alley.  I haven't watched the fencing but it is most likely to try and sway the judges like they do with the enthusiast "howzat" in cricket and in other ways in many sports.

Answer 2

I think maybe because they think they got a point. Lol I know its kind of weird, but I guess they're really into the sport.

Answer 3

As a high level fencer myself, I'm going to have to disagree with many of these answers, to a fair extent. The most common reason for a fencer to scream is to express their emotion after scoring the touch. Fencing does involve a lot of thinking, and movement, in each touch, and a lot of excitement and passion comes out when it proves successful. As someone said before, it is sort of similar to karate, but it's not a specific part of the form in fencing, and for most fencers it's not a completely conscious action. Especially at such a high level, the pressure is incredibly intense, just one-on-one with your opponent, and screaming after a touch is one way to calm yourself down a bit, or, if needed, keep the momentum.

At a high level, I'd have to disagree with what someone said before about using screaming to "scare" or intimidate an opponent; again, it's hard to control, and no one really does it to be malicious. Screaming at an opponent might just anger them enough to get them motivated! Some fencers might try to use a scream to convince a referee to award them the touch on a close call, but it rarely works with high level referees and video replay.

Overall, it's not really used for any malicious purpose, but mainly to celebrate and express yourself after a touch.

Answer 4

It is a poor sportmanship habbit that has built up over the pass 20 years or so in many areas and bad protocol.

The biggest complaint for many years in fencing is the public does not understand the sport and scoring so they do not pay attention and it makes poor broadcasting. So the fight between the purists and the flamboyant has many in-fighting looking for ways to make the sport more appealing to the TV and general public. Both sides have "some" very good points to consider.

edited:

Its That Guy made a good point - during the hit it is common to "focus" your hit and expell or make a noise, it is rude it do so after the hit.

Answer 5

haha yeah I was wondering that too.  Some of them sound like wild animals when they yell.

Answer 6

Yelling is a tactic fencers use to provoke their rivals in a match. If a fencer yells, they are placing anger, fear and jealousy in the rival fencer. It's a psychological war. For example if a fencer gains a point and they yell, the rival fencer will feel anger because they lost the point and jealousy because the fencer got the point and not themselves. Also, if a yell is powerful enough, fear can be produced as a result. I guess that sometimes a fencer is just happy they won the point and what better way to celebrate than yell?  

Answer 7

I'm really unhappy that they showed only the last .25 sec. of the fencing matches.  Fencers yell like in karate, to focus their bodies at the point of the sword. There's a word for this, it's called a kiei (pronounced KEY-eye).

Answer 8

cuz there happy like if you score a goal you would yell wouldnt you?