Star Wars inspired American fencer Smart

One of the tedious tasks for American fencer Keeth Smart in the build-up to Athens is trying to explain to people that he will not have to actually kill someone.

One of the tedious tasks occupying American fencer Keeth Smart in the build-up to the Athens Olympics is trying to explain to people that he will not have to actually kill someone to win a medal.

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Educating an American public whose knowledge of the ancient sport has been shaped by Hollywood films such as Pirates of The Caribbean, Braveheart and Star Wars, is not something Smart takes lightly. After all, Smart's own introduction to fencing came courtesy of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

"At first it took a lot of explaining to my friends, 'Okay, we're not actually really trying to kill each other'," smiled Smart. "But we didn't know what it was either.

"All we knew was from the movies, Star Wars, the light sabre scenes and things like that. We had never seen actual fencing."

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, far removed from the sport's aristocratic European roots, Smart grew up dreaming of becoming an American football or basketball player but instead became the first United States fencer to hold the number one world ranking.

Smart's road to Athens began when his father saw a newspaper article about the Peter Westbrook Foundation, a Manhattan fencing club established to teach the sport to inner-city children.

Wanting his children to seek new challenges, Smart senior enrolled 12-year-old Keeth and his younger sister 11-year-old Erinn, who will also compete in Athens.

MORE RAGE

"Inner-city kids make the best fencers," Westbrook, a black American who overcame racism and discrimination to win the United States' last Olympic fencing medal, a bronze in 1984, told ESPN magazine. "They've got more rage, more anger, greater fighting spirit."

Despite being raised in a comfortable middle-class neighbourhood, there was no shortage of rage and anger in Keeth Smart -- most of it directed at himself.

Initially unable even to beat his sister, Smart found his learning curve painfully slow at first. His frustration manifested itself in temper tantrums on the strip, the hot-tempered New Yorker occasionally throwing his sabre and mask in disgust following a loss.

But a change of weapons, from foil to sabre, along with a change in attitude eventually transformed the now 26-year-old African-American into the fencer some predict could claim the country's first gold medal in the sport.

"We started fencing in 1991, we were the foundation's first students there," recalled Smart, who parlayed his expertise into a fencing scholarship at St. John's University, graduating in 2001 with a degree in finance. "It was different, it wasn't like basketball where you just run and go.

"Fencing is a very technical sport and I was very awkward and gangly when I was young so it was very difficult for me at first.

"In some countries the sport of fencing has been in their history for centuries. It's sort of like how baseball is part of the American culture. Now we're right there with the Europeans."

NUMBER ONE

A four-time All-American, Smart placed an unremarkable 30th at the 2000 Olympics but since those Sydney Games has cut a swathe to the top of the International Fencing Federation's sabre world rankings, replacing Russia's Stanislav Pozdniakov as world number one for six weeks last year.

While Smart has slipped out of the top 10 in the world rankings he remains a serious medal threat in Athens having ended Russian and French domination in the men's sabre by winning nine World Cup medals over the last two years, including two golds.

Acknowledging that fencing will never be a mainstream sport, Smart has nonetheless had an impact.

Having been profiled in GQ, People and New Yorker magazines, he has given fencing a face and that elusive 'cool' vibe, generating a buzz around a sport that had operated in a vacuum.

During a recent World Cup event staged at New York's Grand Central station, Smart pulled in more than 1,000 curious spectators for his bouts.

That exposure has in turn brought new people to the sport and among them perhaps future Olympians.

"In 1984 Peter Westbrook won a bronze medal and that brought a lot of press and he made the Peter Westbrook foundation from that and that's how we started fencing," said Erinn Smart. "I feel like if we are able to bring home another medal who knows what might happen to the sport from there."