Performance Analysis In Sabre

Fencing is a sport, practised by both men and women, which uses three weapons: foil, épée, and sabre. In general, there are few scientific studies available in international literature; they are limited to the performance analysis of fencing bouts, yet there is nothing about sabre. There are two kinds of competitions in the World Cup for both men and women: the "FIE GP" and "A".The aim of this study is to carry out a sabre performance analysis in order to gain useful indicators for the definition of a performance model. In addition, it is expected to verify if it could be influenced by the type of competition, and if there are differences between men and women.Sixty bouts: 33 "FIE GP" and 27 "A" competitions (35 men's and 25 women's sabre bouts) were analysed.The results indicated that: most actions are offensive (55% for men and 49% for women); the central area of the piste is the most used (72% for men and 67% for women); the effective fighting time is 13.6% for men and 17.1% for women, and the ratio between the action and break times is 1:6.5 for men, and 1:5.1 for women. A lunge is carried out every 23,9 seconds by men and every 20 seconds by women; and a direction change is carried out every 65.3 seconds by men and every 59.7 seconds by women. The data confirms the differences between the sabre and the other two weapons. There is no significant difference between the data of the two different kinds of competitions.