Inside Singapore's First-Ever Asian Games Women's Epee Team Bronze

A sound without a roar

Inside a fencing hall, the loudest thing is never the crowd. It is the short, dry, emotionless beep of the electronic scoring box, sounding the instant two blades meet hard enough to close a circuit. Then silence. Then the referee's raised hand. Then a light on one side, or the other, or both at once.

I was sitting in front of a screen in Da Nang, out of sync with the time zone, watching Singapore's women's epee team enter the Asian Games quarter-final. On the other side of the piste was Uzbekistan. The scoreboard ticked forward touch by touch, and if you only read the final result in a news brief, you would never understand why the Singapore team was standing there at that exact moment.

In more than twenty years of writing about martial arts and combat sports, I have learned one thing: disciplines with a roar are remembered, and disciplines that only breathe are overlooked. Fencing is the second kind. Nobody screams when a touch lands true. There is no blood, no knockout, no sound of bone on bone. There is only a person in white, set in an en-garde stance, waiting for a hundredth of a second to step in.

And inside that silence, Singapore just did something it had never done before.

The scene reminded me of a line I once wrote after a reporting trip to Moscow: sitting in the stands, I learned to listen with my eyes and look with my ears. Fencing teaches that more clearly than any other sport. You do not watch a touch — you hear it. You do not listen for the cheer — you watch the referee's hand.

A primer: three weapons and one strip

To follow this story, Vietnamese readers need a little groundwork.

Modern fencing has three weapons: foil, sabre and epee. Newcomers often assume they are the same thing — white jackets, masks, a long strip, two people lunging at each other. But the rules differ enough to make them almost three separate sports.

Foil has a limited target area on the torso, excluding arms and head. Sabre allows cuts as well as thrusts, with a target area from the waist up. Both use the rule of "right of way." When two fencers touch almost simultaneously, the referee must decide who attacked and whose counter-attack was valid, and only the fencer with priority scores. That pushes both weapons toward speed, initiative and continuous attack.

Epee has no right of way. The whole body is a target, from the tip of the toe to the top of the head. And crucially: if both fencers touch, both score. English calls it a "double touch."

That single rule shapes the entire character of epee. It turns the decision to attack first into a gamble. As a result, epee becomes the most patient, the most defensive, and the most upset-prone of the three weapons.

In other words, epee is the only weapon in which a weaker team can survive against a stronger one by controlling tempo and limiting risk — something nearly impossible in foil or sabre.

On equipment: each fencer wears a conductive protective jacket, a steel-mesh mask, and holds a weapon wired to the scoring box through a reel, with a cable running along the floor. The strip — the "piste" — is 14 metres long and about 2 metres wide. When a fencer is pushed back to the rear limit, the referee halts the bout and returns both to the centre. It is a distinctive rule: you cannot lose by being pushed off the strip, but you lose your position.

An individual bout runs up to three periods of three minutes, or until one fencer reaches 15 touches. In the team event, everything changes.

Context: the top seed and a history without a medal

Singapore's women's epee team this cycle was made up of four names: Kiria Tikanah, Filzah Hidayah, Esther Tan and Elle Koh. They entered the team event as the top seed — placed among the strongest by the points and ranking system, and granted a bye through the first round. In a knockout format at a continental Games, top seeding is a concrete advantage: an extra rest day, fewer bouts, fresher legs for the deep rounds.

But it is also a psychological trap. Top seeding means expectations that do not stop at any medal.

Before this edition, Singapore's women's epee team had been eliminated in the quarter-finals at three consecutive Asian Games. Three editions. Nearly a decade of the same group, the same goal, and the same door closing at exactly the same round. When a group keeps its skeleton intact across multiple cycles without breaking through, there are two possibilities: either the system is on the right track but missing one piece, or the system has hit its ceiling.

This time, they got through the quarter-final. And they went home with the first-ever bronze medal for Singapore in the women's epee team event.

This was not the first time I had seen a group stand before a door that had been shut for years. I once sat in a riverside coffee shop on the Han River, listening to fans and former players argue about a club on the verge of collapse. In that moment I understood that a brand is not a logo — it is trust. The same applies to fencing. Three quarter-final exits say nothing about a group's talent. They say something about whether they still believe in each other.

The team format: nine bouts, forty-five touches, and a clock

A team fencing match is not three individual bouts added together. It is a single, long match divided into nine relays.

Each team fields three main fencers. They rotate: A versus X, B versus Y, C versus Z, then A versus Y, B versus Z, C versus X, and so on through nine relays. The target is forty-five touches. The first team to reach forty-five wins. If time expires before anyone reaches it, the team with the lead wins.

Each relay ends when one side reaches that relay's cumulative milestone — three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, and so on in increments of five, up to forty-five in the final leg. That means the match is broken into short segments, each with its own milestone, and both teams change fencers at every break.

At many events, each relay in a team match lasts three minutes. If nobody reaches the relay milestone when the three minutes expire, both fencers return to their marks and the next relay begins from the existing score. But there is an overall ceiling: the match cannot run forever. When total time runs out and nobody has reached forty-five, the referee declares the leading team the winner.

That structure has a major tactical consequence: in team fencing, the fencer who takes the final leg — the anchor — inherits the match in whatever state the teammates left it. If the first three legs left a negative gap, the anchor must chase. If they left a positive gap, the anchor only has to hold.

And here is the striking part: a team can lose most of the match and still win, as long as the anchor wins enough at the end. Or the opposite. Team fencing is one of the few sporting formats in which the final result tells you very little about who controlled the majority of the contest.

To help readers picture it: imagine a football match where the score is accumulated in fifteen-minute blocks, and at the end of each block the coach may substitute. You could lose the first three blocks and win the last four. You could lead for four blocks and collapse in the final one. The final score is not the sum of the match — it is the state at the very last moment. Team fencing works almost exactly like that.

Quarter-final against Uzbekistan: forty-two to forty-one

This is the match I have rewatched many times.

According to reporting from the event, Singapore fell significantly behind in the quarter-final against Uzbekistan. They came back late, and anchor Elle Koh brought the match home at 42–41.

There is a technical detail here that casual viewers routinely miss, and it matters more than the score.

The standard team format is to forty-five touches. So why did this match stop at 42–41?

The answer is the clock. A team match has time limits per relay and an overall limit. If the clock runs out before anyone reaches forty-five, the referee stops the match and the leading team wins. That means the quarter-final was decided by time, not by reaching the touch target.

Why does that matter? Because it changes how we read the phrase "stunning comeback."

If the match had ended at forty-five, Singapore would have won by scoring repeatedly until they overtook their opponents on the attack — a story about power. But if the match ended when the clock expired at 42–41, the story is about time management and risk control: Singapore did not need to win by attacking more; they needed to lead when the clock stopped.

In a sport where both fencers can score on the same action, holding a one-touch lead in the closing seconds is a completely different skill from attacking to finish. In epee, holding a one-touch lead for the final thirty seconds is harder than scoring one more touch. Because the opponent is forced to attack, and in epee, the fencer forced to attack is the one most likely to be counter-hit.

There is a technical paradox here that I have always found fascinating: in epee, a good defence is a good offence. The attacker must commit, must step into the distance where a counter-thrust can arrive first. If you stand still and force your opponent to commit, you hold the counter-attacker's advantage. But if you stand still too long, the referee can penalise you for passivity — a rule that applies to all three weapons.

So Singapore, technically speaking, won at the hardest possible moment: the moment they had to stand still while still looking like they wanted to fight.

I call this a "win by clock." It is not glamorous. It does not produce highlight reels. But it is the kind of win every fencing coach dreams of their students achieving.

Semi-final against South Korea: thirty-five to forty-five, and the real limit

If the quarter-final was evidence of resilience, the semi-final was evidence of the remaining gap.

Singapore lost to South Korea 35–45. South Korea were the reigning champions in this event and, in Asian fencing, one of the leading powers — alongside China, Japan and Hong Kong. Losing by ten touches is a clear margin. It was not a loss to a lucky touch, nor to a referee's decision.

Ten touches in the team format amounts to being controlled from roughly the midpoint onward. It is the kind of defeat a stronger team imposes by scoring steadily, without explosions, never allowing the opponent to close the gap relay by relay.

In epee, a stronger team usually does not win with bursts. They win by keeping the margin at a safe distance and never allowing the opponent a run of three touches within a single relay. A ten-touch margin at continental team level is the margin of a side that has read its opponent and stripped away their capacity for unpredictability.

And this is the core of the whole story: Singapore's bronze was not built on a dominant match, but on one surviving quarter-final and one semi-final lost exactly as predicted.

In other words, Singapore touched their ceiling exactly this cycle. They got through the quarter-final door — the door that had blocked them three editions running — but they have not yet got through the South Korea door.

That does not diminish the medal. It simply places the medal in the correct position on the map of strength. A bronze in an Asian team event means you are among the four best teams on the continent in that event. It does not mean you are ready to beat the number one.

The rule that turns defeat into a medal

There is one rule here that fans of combat sports will find very strange.

At the Asian Games — and at many major fencing events — there is no bronze-medal match. Both losing semi-finalists receive bronze.

Compare that with football, where losing a semi-final is a tragedy and you must play another match to salvage some dignity. Compare it with boxing, where losing a semi-final means you have a bronze medal but still carry the defeat as a scar. In fencing, losing a semi-final and winning a bronze-medal match produce the same outcome: bronze.

That rule has a deep tactical implication few notice: it reduces the value of winning the quarter-final and increases the value of simply reaching the semi-final. In other words, it turns the quarter-final into the single most important match of the whole tournament for any team not strong enough to win gold.

For Singapore, that means their entire Asian Games campaign — in medal terms — was decided in one match: the quarter-final against Uzbekistan, which ended when the clock expired at 42–41.

Three Asian Games, three quarter-final exits. In the fourth, they won exactly that match. The rest of the medal story was written in that instant. The semi-final, in medal terms, meant nothing except to determine which colour of medal they could not win.

This also explains a phenomenon common in knockout formats with similar rules: mid-tier teams tend to concentrate all their preparation on the quarter-final, because that is the match that decides their medal. In such formats, the quarter-final is a miniature final.

And it also means that a semi-final defeat, however painful, does not take away the medal. It only takes away the chance to change its colour.

The anatomy of a relay team: who does what

When watching team fencing, viewers tend to focus only on the anchor. But the structure of a relay team is more complex.

An epee team has three main fencers, usually arranged in three different roles. The opener's job is to establish initiative, not to fall too far behind early. The second fencer — sometimes called the "middle" — is often the one who handles pressure, tasked with either closing or extending the gap depending on the situation. And the anchor carries the responsibility of closing out.

But in the nine-relay rotating format, all three fencers must face all three opponents. Nobody can hide from a difficult matchup. That is why squad depth matters more in team fencing than in many other relay sports.

If you have one strong fencer and two weak ones, the opponent will arrange their strongest fencer against your two weak ones as many times as possible across nine relays. In team fencing, the gap is not created by your best fencer — it is created at your weakest point.

For Singapore, Elle Koh is named as the anchor who brought the quarter-final home. But if Kiria Tikanah, Filzah Hidayah and Esther Tan had not held the margin across the first eight relays — or had not left a recoverable position — the final relay would have had nothing to close out.

I once heard an athlete say after a match: "We knew we had to stay calm and trust each other." That is not a platitude. In team fencing, trust has a concrete technical weight: if the fencer taking the next relay does not trust the one before, they will gamble, and gambling in epee means conceding double touches repeatedly.

Conversely, if the earlier fencer trusts that the next one can rescue the situation, they can slow down and accept losing a touch or two to hold position. That mutual trust, measured in touches, is a technical fact rather than an emotional story.

Kiria Tikanah and the question of the programme's anchor

Another detail lies outside the team event: Kiria Tikanah, one of the four team members, won an individual silver medal at this edition.

In a small sporting nation, an individual silver at a continental championship means more than a medal. It means the federation's development programme has produced a fencer capable of standing on an individual podium — the prerequisite for a strong team.

In fencing, a strong team is almost always built on a solid individual base. Because the team event is a test of depth: you need three fencers who can hold their own against top opponents across nine consecutive relays, not just one outstanding individual.

Singapore also added a bronze in foil this cycle, according to event reporting. Three medals across three different events (individual epee silver, team epee bronze, foil bronze) point to a fencing nation with breadth, not a one-off phenomenon.

That is worth learning from, and also worth worrying about. A sport with three medals across three different events is usually a sport that has invested in the right direction for years. But it is also usually a sport dependent on a few key individuals — and when those individuals retire, the structure can collapse faster than people expect.

Four people in a team sounds like a lot. But in the team event, three is the skeleton. Lose one of the three, and the entire relay order changes. Lose two, and the team loses even the capacity for regret.

The contrarian view: top seed and a bronze medal

So far the story sounds like a small heroic epic. But there is another reading, and I think Vietnamese fans should know how to read it.

Singapore entered as the top seed. In any knockout format, the top seed is expected to be in the final match. If you are the highest-ranked team, reaching the semi-final is the minimum. Winning bronze is the lowest outcome within your capability — by the logic of seeding.

Put the two readings side by side:

The first reading, by history: this is the first bronze in the history of Singapore's women's epee team event, after three consecutive quarter-final exits. This is a breakthrough.

The second reading, by seeding: this team was ranked number one, and they did not reach the gold-medal match. This is an underperformance.

Both readings are correct, but they cannot coexist in one headline. And in the media, the headline usually chooses the first.

That is why I always advise sports readers to separate "performance relative to history" from "performance relative to ranking." These two measures gauge different things, and mixing them produces a distorted picture.

Singapore exceeded its own history. Singapore has not yet exceeded its own ranking.

For a small sporting nation, the first matters more. For a programme that has set gold-medal targets, the second is the real concern. Knowing where you stand on both measures is the difference between a programme that develops sustainably and one that celebrates and then stands still.

Who benefits from how this story is told

There is another detail worth noting, and it belongs to the media side.

The news highlights about this result were released with a promotion section from the broadcaster — in this case, a domestic streaming platform in Singapore. The final three paragraphs of the brief were devoted to platform promotion, not competition information.

That is not wrong. Any rights-holding broadcaster does the same. But readers need to know they are reading a product written by a party with a commercial interest in the story being told favourably.

The phrase "stunning comeback" is an editorial choice, not a fact. The fact is the score. The adjective "stunning" was added by the writer.

I say this not to diminish the athletes' achievement. I say it to remind readers that in sport, the difference between a sporting event and a media product is this: a sporting event happens once, while a media product is retold many times in the direction that benefits the teller.

The reader's only defence is to return to the raw facts: top seed, first-round bye, a quarter-final won when the clock expired, a semi-final lost by ten touches, a bronze secured by a rule that omits the bronze-medal match.

That is the whole story, and it is enough. No adjectives required.

A viewer's guide to team fencing

Since I know most Vietnamese readers have never watched a full team fencing match, let me leave some practical notes.

First, do not try to follow every touch. Follow the milestones. Each relay has a cumulative target, and what you need to know is which team is closer to it.

Second, watch the referee's hand. In fencing, the referee's hand is the second scoreboard. When two lights come on together, that hand decides who scores — or whether both do. In epee, both scoring is normal, and that is the biggest difference from the other two weapons.

Third, watch the feet. Newcomers watch the blade tip, but people inside the sport watch the feet first. Foot position determines distance, and distance determines who can attack first.

Fourth, pay attention to time. In team fencing, the clock is part of the tactics, not just a measuring tool. A leading team can deliberately slow the match. A trailing team may have to take risks. And when the referee penalises passivity, the match can turn.

Fifth, watch the anchor. The final relay usually contains more information than the first eight combined. That is where you see who genuinely reads their opponent.

A Vietnamese view from Da Nang

I live in Da Nang, and I write for Vietnamese readers. So the question I always ask myself when reading a report like this is: what does it mean for us?

Vietnamese fencing holds its own place in the region. At the SEA Games, Vietnamese fencers have for years been in the medal group in several events, with names like Vu Thanh An in sabre and Nguyen Tien Nhat in epee. At continental level, the gap is wider — and anyone who follows Vietnamese fencing knows it.

What is worth learning from Singapore's case is not the medal. It is the structure behind the medal.

First, persistence with a group of athletes. Three Asian Games ending in the quarter-finals means a long stretch in which a group was retained, invested in, and continuously sent to international competition. Many small sporting nations change personnel after every defeat, and therefore never accumulate enough elite-competition experience to break through a quarter-final.

Second, breadth rather than height. Three medals across three different events — individual silver, team bronze, foil bronze — show a development system producing different types of fencers rather than concentrating all resources on one outstanding individual.

Third, understanding the rules of the format. Singapore holding a one-touch lead in the closing seconds of the quarter-final shows they had trained for that situation. No team stays calm in the final thirty seconds of an epee match without having rehearsed it hundreds of times.

None of those three things requires a huge budget. They require time, consistency, and a training system that knows what it is teaching.

There is one more thing I want to say as a writer. In Vietnam, whenever a small sport wins something, the reaction is usually to ask immediately why we have not done it. I think the better question is: how many cycles have we managed to keep one group of people together? Because fencing — like any technically demanding sport — does not reward bursts. It rewards accumulation.

Signals to track next

For a small sporting nation that has just won its first medal in an event, there are four signals to watch over the next few years.

Federation funding. In many national sports systems, a continental medal unlocks multi-year funding. If Singapore's fencing federation receives an increased allocation, the number of clubs and young fencers will rise a few years later.

Next-cycle performance. Aichi-Nagoya will host the next edition. If Singapore again exits in the quarter-final or semi-final, this medal will be read as a one-off ceiling touch. If they reach the gold-medal match, it will be read as a genuine turning point.

Squad continuity. Whether the four names Kiria Tikanah, Filzah Hidayah, Esther Tan and Elle Koh still stand together next cycle. A programme built on a group with a limited competitive lifespan may see its first medal also be its only medal for a long time.

And finally, viewership. If the domestic broadcaster records a sustained rise in fencing audiences after this edition, that is a sign the medal entered daily life rather than merely the news bulletin.

Conclusion

I once wrote that some matches last ninety minutes, but their stories linger for decades. A team fencing match lasts under an hour. But its story — the story of a group that kept its line-up intact across four editions in exchange for one touch at the very last second — may linger longer.

Sitting in Da Nang, thousands of kilometres from that piste, I learned an old lesson that every Games teaches again: sports without a roar often teach us more about the nature of competition. Because when there is no roar, all that remains is technique, patience, and a running clock.

Singapore's women's epee team stood on the right side of that clock. This time.

The question for the next edition, when the piste moves to Aichi-Nagoya, is whether they can still stand there — or whether another group will learn the lesson and take that place first.