Canada's Leonora Mackinnon (R) competes against Romania's Simona Pop during their womens individual epee qualifying bout as part of the fencing event of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, on August 6, 2016, at the Carioca Arena 3, in Rio de Janeiro.FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP / Getty Images
It's hard to tell one Olympic fencer from the next. Dressed in whites, and hidden behind a mask, they can seem unrecognizable to the untrained eye.
But good fencers don't necessarily need to see their opponent to know whom they're competing against. Like few other Olympic sports, fencing is almost invariably a duel between two very familiar foes. Chances are, they've met before – many times.
The community of elite fencers is small enough that it's nearly impossible for two top-level combatants to come up through the sport without having duelled each other numerous times along the way, gaining intimate knowledge of each other's traits, quirks and tactics.
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When 21-year-old fencing phenom and NCAA foil champion Eleanor Harvey takes to the strip for Canada on Wednesday against her Algerian competitor, the two will be the furthest thing from strangers, having fenced against each other since childhood.
"I've been fencing her since I was like 11," Harvey said. "I've fenced her a lot of times. It kind of makes it seem more comfortable. It's not like I'm fencing someone I've never fenced."
Facing a new competitor you've never seen before does happen – if Harvey advances to the second round, she'll compete against someone she's never met – but it's the exception.
Even if the best fencers don't compete directly against each other, they typically congregate in select training academies around the world, fencing alongside the best, and familiarizing themselves with the sport's crème de la crème.
In training, the athletes can become so familiar with each other that they start to notice patterns in each other's tactics. Like two old chess players executing tried-and-true moves at certain moments, fencers often pick up on their opponent's habits if they see them enough.
"Yes, for sure," says Leonora Mackinnon, a British-born Canadian fencer who trains among the sport's best in Paris. "We're set very much into our patterns."
That can lead to some interesting results, she says.
"When we're training, I'm fascinated that I'll keep doing the same movements, and they'll keep doing the same movements and the scores always end up to be quite similar."
Adept fencers will mask those traits in competition though.
"In competition, it's definitely a bit different because the mindset is different and there's different scenarios being thrown at you," Mackinnon said. "Definitely in training, I see the patterns come out."
Mackinnon faced an unusual challenge heading into these Olympics. Her first matchup was against Romanian Simona Pop, a competitor she had only seen once before. There was little to go on in terms of knowing Pop's game.
"I was trying to think the last time I fenced her – it was last year at Worlds. And I think it was the first time I fenced her. So I can't really remember," Mackinnon said. She did recall that Pop won that match.
"It's kind of unusual," Mackinnon said before that match. "I've never really fenced her before."
As the first Canadian fencer to compete in Rio, Mackinnon decided that the best approach was to proceed with caution against the relative stranger. "Try to be a bit more investigative, just see what she's going to do," she said with a shrug.
When the two met on Saturday in Canadian fencing's opening match, Mackinnon rode that plan to a 15-10 victory. True to her strategy, the two were tied 3-3 after the first of three periods. By the end of the second period, Mackinnon built a five-point lead and never let go.
Mackinnon's coach in France, Daniel Levavasseur, oversees eight women competing in Rio, including four members of China's national team. That provides further opportunity for fencers who know each other extremely well to square off at the Olympics.
"At some point, one of us will meet the other one," Mackinnon says.
It's no different on the men's side, where the community is also closely knit. Canadian Maximilien Van Haaster drew a Venezuelan for his first match. "It's somebody I know pretty well," he said.
No matter who the opponent is, though, the goal is always the same: concentrate on the points, and tune out the distractions, including the lights, the spectators and the opponent – regardless of familiarity.
"You don't see anything," Canadian Maxime Brinck-Croteau said. "You just look at the guy in front of you, who is trying to stab you more often than you're trying to stab him."
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