"Men's Individual Sabre Semi-Finals - London 2012 Olympics"

So here we go for the first of the semi-finals. Nikolai Kovalev against Aaron Zalegy of Hungary. Hold on to your seats because this is Sabre. This is Fast and Furious. The hits come thick and fast. It's crash bang wallop time. First blood Aaron Zalegy. A nice attack. Pay no attention to the clock in the middle of your screen. No Sabre competition ever goes to the full allocated time. This is going to be first to 15. Another attack from Zalegy. He goes 2-0 up. Nice and strong there. They'll break when the first fencer gets to eight points. An attack goes through from the Russian. He's scoring his first hit and we have the first video appeal from Aaron Zalegy of Hungary. Now let me just explain the lighting system to you. Whenever a hit is scored, whenever your opponent's blade touches the Lame jacket or helmet that you're wearing, then that registers as a light. If you're the only one to get a light on the board then chances are you will get the point. But most of the time you'll see this both lights will come on and the referee needs to decide who started, who initiated the attack. And two simultaneous attacks there. When they attack at the same time the referee doesn't give a hit to anybody. Slight pause from Kovalev as far as Zalegy is concerned but the referee is not separating that. It is a superb venue and the lighting just really catches against the blades. You can actually see really well what the actual blades are doing. Saw that. Parry post. Beautiful. Very brave to step into that kind of distance against your opponent and rely on your reactions to block your opponent's blade with your own as you saw there very clearly. Now does the first attack go through for Zalegy? It does indeed. And Zalegy is now four points in the lead. We happen to be sat next to the Hungarian commentators so things could get rather exciting next door. Parry riposte of his own there from Kovalev. So invites the attack on blocks and comes through with his attack of his own. A parry is the block, the riposte. A re-attack. Only one light on. Point to Kovalev. See him go through here at speed, blocks out the blade from his opponent's counter-attack to ensure that he gets a single light on the box. They're together. Both of them attack at the same time. Can't be separated. Reset where you are. Again, simultaneous attacks. Referee won't split them. Referee takes a quick look at the screen in front of him and says no he can't separate those either. Now we've seen a lot of this in the preliminary rounds. The fight that Darrell Homer came through against the number two seed Yakimenko. They had about half a dozen of these simultaneous attacks at 14 all. And is it the referees, have they been instructed to judge more of these simultaneous attacks? Well we were speaking to a sabre specialist, no sabre specialist, I was a foilist, and he certainly suggested that it seems that every single referee has been very consistent in the fact that they are giving a little bit more lenience in the middle as they say. So if there is not a very very clear attacker they won't separate them. And it's slightly disrupted some of the fences today which may suggest why we've had some of the top seats going out. Because they're getting frustrated that when they think they've scored they haven't. There's a pause there from Kovalev and Zalagi goes back into the lead. That's 6-5 and he'll get that one as well. Jumping attack. You can't step your feet over. You can't cross your feet. No you can't bring your back foot in front of your front foot in sabre when you're going forwards. So in fall you would call that a flesh attack like an arrow. A crossover is what you call the step crossing your feet over. But what we're doing in sabre is a flunge, a cross between a flesh and a lunge. As Zalagi scores the third hit in a row to take us to the break at 8-5. And he scored, well he scored seven of his eight hits with an attack. So being the more aggressive fencer here has taken him into a three hit lead. Talk to their coaches. Take on some water. It's a fairly short format competition for these guys. Usually they fence in a round of pulls up to five hits against up to six other fencers. And there you see Christian Bauer on the far side there. Grey hair in the middle as we look at the screen. He's talking through an interpreter. Yes. He was with the Chinese team and he did get a gold medal last time with his charge with Chong. Yeah and he's been with four teams in recent history and they've all gone on and been daubed in gold medals. Four teams, four different countries and reputedly the highest paid coach in the world. Highest paid fencing coach I should say. I think there's some football or soccer coaches out there that get paid a little bit more than he does. There's probably some baseball coaches too that are way higher than that altogether. But it's an astronomical amount of money that he gets paid compared to a regular fencing coach. He's working to attack. Kovalev strikes first in the second period. Well he certainly responded to whatever it was that Christian Bauer said to him. Something along the lines of get up and get at him. Referee taking a look at that. So what he said there is that Kovalev came forward and he pulled his arm back and then Zalagi did exactly the same thing. So effectively it was Kovalev's go but they've been called back to review by Zalagi one would imagine. There's our video referee. And that is Zalagi's last video call because it was rejected. Zalagi thinks he's got that one. He has. It's a slow attack from Kovalev and he went downstairs as we say. He went underneath down there. You see underneath the fencer on the right that's Kovalev and the referee decided that was actually him pulling his arm back as he went tried to go underneath his opponent's blade. It's a straight attack from the Hungarian. You can see the referee stood there in the darkness shadows. Beautiful. So when he raises his arm to the side of the fencer that's the fencer that has gained a hit. Yeah so as we looked at that then Kovalev on the right launched an attack and Zalagi stood his ground and swept up his opponent's blade with his own and thus giving him the right of way and scoring with what we call the apost. Attack fails and a counter fails and then the attack comes through from the Hungarian. Oh it's looking pretty good for Zalagi now. Great demonstration of both aggressive and defensive footwork running in and out. Well that point lasted longer than most. This one's a fast one. Another attack. Straight out of the blocks and Kovalev's really since that one point after the break where he actually scored one by attacking. He just lost that that mental edge. He just seems to be backing away. Just he moves forward but nowhere near as fast forward. Nope he's out of distance most of the time when coming forwards and there you go again attacking from too far away with his arm back and Zalagi is able to pick him off coming forwards and Zalagi is one point away from guaranteeing at least the silver medal. So this is it. Crunch time. I mean there's a long way back for the Russian now. Mountain to climb and they couldn't make it. That is it. Aaron Zalagi goes through to the final. The Russian Nikolai Kovalev did not have an answer to Zalagi's attacks. Just looked like he took the foot off the gas and it's the Hungarian that goes through for the gold medal bout. Well it started well for the Russian but Zalagi came out right from the start and he meant business and he finished things off pretty quickly in that second period with a series of blistering attacks. Well it just didn't look like Kovalev really had settled at all and there was like one or two points where he was able to launch his own attacks but he didn't change his tactics. Just kept on with the same and it didn't work for him. Not quite. He did his utmost but Zalagi had the best distance control in that fight and was able to control it from a little bit further away than Kovalev wanted to fence at and he goes through guaranteeing at least a silver medal but the form that he's in at the moment he is going to be the red hot favorite whoever comes through the other semi-final.