Frankly, back in the old days when Olympic fencing never turned up on TV, I used to wish I could watch it. But then it appeared, on streaming video. And I've tr

Frankly, back in the old days when Olympic fencing never turned up on TV, I used to wish I could watch it. But then it appeared, on streaming video. And I've tried to watch it every four years. And I always turn it off after a couple of minutes, because it is the most boring spectator sport I can think of. Even bowling, which is far emptier of visible strategy than fencing, is perhaps more fun to watch, because it makes pleasant sounds and has a soothing rhythm and you can immediately see the difference between a good frame and a bad frame. And I actually spent more time watching archery last week, which is really boring as a spectator, but again it has a hypnotic rhythm, and at least you can see where the arrows land. In fencing, most of the time the participants are hovering looking for openings and baiting each other, and then something happens that you barely see, and half the time that's a no-action anyway because they didn't hit the target, or they moved past each other, or the equipment broke. I see, from our more-informed commenters, that this controversial match seems to have involved a tie, three tiebreakers, two dubious judgement calls and a denouement that happened too fast to see and that may have been a glitch. I wish this were atypical of my experience with fencing, but that pretty much sums up what it all looks like to me. ;) So, not surprisingly, it turns out that a lot of sports are more fun to do, or read about, than to watch. Maybe it would be different if I really understood fencing, rather than knowing some but not all of the rules.