Thompson Trophy

A thousand ladies and gentlemen in evening dress sat around a narrow, wooden platform beneath the great crystal chandelier of the Biltmore Hotel's grand ballroom in Manhattan one night last week and smiled indulgently as a group of white canvas-clad figures went into a huddle and yelled: "Hip, hip, hurray, America!" Promptly another huddle formed on the other side of the platform and yelled: "Hip, hip, hurray, Great Britain!" Then 19 U. S. and ten British fencers were given medals. The British got silver ones. The U. S. team got gold ones and a delicately fashioned bronze representing Hector and Achilles, because they had just won the Col. Robert M. Thompson Trophy. In the summer of 1920 at Antwerp, the British Olympic fencing team and the U. S. team sat down to dinner. Over wine, one of the Britons observed that such pleasant company should get together oftener, suggested that if the Yankees would put up a cup or something the British would go over and take it away from them. Col. Robert Means Thompson, longtime executive of the American Olympic Committee and rich Annapolis graduate for whose Thompson Cup the U. S. Military and Naval Academies used to contest at football, agreed to furnish the prize. Last week's matches were regarded by U. S. swordsmen as second only in importance to the Olympics, were fought as usual with foil, epee and sabre, but the scoring system was slightly different from previous years. Each team put up four men in each event, each event to comprise 16 bouts. Each bout won counted two points to the winning team. Ties in epee counted a point apiece. Team with the highest total in the three weapons won the trophy. Foil. Two of the four U. S. foilsmen are U. S. champions. None of the four Britons is national champion. Nevertheless, outstanding swordsman of the evening was British Major A. Dennis Pearce, 38, a left-handed War aviator, slender, agile and amazingly cool under attack. He won all four of his bouts, personally accounted for half the challengers' victories. He trounced (5-to-4) 26-year-old Hugh Alessandroni, another left-hander who had won the U. S. foil championship week before. Best showing made by the U. S. team was the performance of Warren A. Dow, who won three bouts, lost only to Pearce. Each team won eight bouts. The score: 16-to-16. Epee. It takes the closest scrutiny of four judges and a director to call the touches in a foil contest. There is considerably less room for doubt in an epee match. The weapons are tipped with tell-tale red ink. The men who did the most red-inking in the Thompson epee bouts were a slim, drawling southerner, Lieut. Gustave M. Heiss, 1933-34 U. S. champion, and a British antiquarian, Charles Louis de Beaumont. They scored three triumphs each and tied the bout in which they faced each other. In the total scoring, the U. S. team, none over 29, had considerable edge over their challengers, whose combined ages were almost twice as great. The U. S. team went into the sabre event leading 34-to-30. Sabre had been generally conceded to the home team. But to their amazement, Captain Guy L. G. Harry, a port wine merchant, led a slashing British attack which took four of the first five bouts, brought the visitors into the lead 38-to-36. Then the U. S. team rallied and brought the score to 44-to-42. Dr. John R. Huffman, Yale graduate student in chemistry who lost his U. S. championship fortnight ago by a slim margin, took the decisive bout. Champion Norman C. Armitage, a chemist himself, and famed Photographer Nickolas Muray, took two bouts apiece. Final score: U. S., 54; Great Britain, 42.

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