The Fake Sports Scandal Taking Over Fox News

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

She says, you are a man, I am a woman, and this is a woman's event,

and I will not offend you.

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So, when you were here last on the show, helping us investigate, helping us uncover the most corrupt sport in the Olympics, saber fencing, which was a story that went all the way to the top of the sport, all the way to Russia and beyond,

oligarchs and international, you know, scandal.

Like a poorly written spy novel or something.

Well, yeah, honestly, it's a, yes.

That now feels even more cinematic because when you left our studio and went back to your life as, in my opinion, the foremost expert odd fencing in America, you became an actual recognized whistleblower.

Yes, that's correct.

So shortly after that happened, I was contacted by someone in, we'll just say, the French Olympic Integrity Committee.

They said they had seen the show and some of the other things that I had released about the corruption

and asked if I was worried that that would happen in Paris as well.

I told them I was very worried that that would happen.

And they basically asked me to fill out a form for the French government designating me a whistleblower in France.

And then also had me highlight pretty much instructions for how I thought that that kind of subversion could happen at the Olympics and my suggestions for how to prevent it from happening.

And they basically implemented a system that was watching for those things and tried to prevent them from happening.

Which is to say, Andrew Fischel, good to have you back in studio.

Yeah,

out of everything that's gone on, even if I never accomplish anything else again in the sport, which I hope doesn't happen, but even if it does, it's nice to know that because of the efforts that we have put forth, those games were a little bit fairer.

And that's something that people work their whole life towards.

So I felt just an amazing sense of relief that someone was actually taking that seriously enough to act on it.

And that seriousness and that approach, I just want to make it clear to everybody who already is like, oh my God, you're doing another fencing episode.

The reason I'm doing it is because this story is unbelievably interesting.

Whether you give a single shit about fencing or whether you devoted your whole life to this as you have, as you wear, by the way, way, your USA fencing garb.

In multiple forms, yeah.

Yeah, multiple layers of patriotism when it comes to the integrity of American fencing.

Yes.

And by the way, I want to also credit the people who participated on that show we did last year, who

in various ways that I cannot fully disclose were contacted by law enforcement overseas, just like real shit, man.

Real shit.

And so the reason you're here today is

an interesting inversion of this premise of here you are, the whistleblower for the integrity of fencing, now evaluating what is the biggest story in all of sports, according to Fox News.

Yeah, and the U.S.

government.

Staten Island, New York, Wagner College, a female fencer standing her ground by taking a knee and refusing to compete against a biological male.

A video from over the weekend shows that Stephanie Turner forfeiting a match, taking off her helmet, taking a knee against a transgender athlete.

Referees gave Turner a black card, which immediately disqualifies her from the entire competition.

Global attention after a female fencer was given the ultimate punishment for refusing to compete against a biological man.

A female fencer stands up for fairness in women's sports.

These men are cowards.

They're failed men competing against women.

This is a combination, as I said, of DOJ and Department of Education because DOJ

has the ability to file criminal charges.

It was a single issue for many voters who, yes, realized they had been indoctrinated by the mainstream media when the reality was so clear when it's facing you and when that person facing you is holding a sword.

For those who haven't been watching a ton of Fox News recently, haven't been watching the articles, the comments from J.K.

Rowling to Martina Navratilova, to certainly cabinet members like Linda McMahon, whose voice we heard, the former wrestling promoter turned Secretary of Education of the United States.

How would you describe the tonnage of coverage here?

It's been just continuous.

Stephanie, it's so great to have you on.

So many people are looking up to you because you were so courageous.

Tell me what happened in that moment.

I did an interview with one of the fencers in the clip a few weeks ago, and at the time, there, I think, were 15 Fox News stories about this.

The reality is these men can't cut it with the other male athletes, so therefore, they are coming into the female sports.

You're telling me that who was disqualified was the person who dared to stand up for protecting biological women in sports.

Why wasn't that other individual disqualified?

This is gone.

Part of what's darkly funny about this, of course, is that you have to convince typically, we have had to convince together people:

hey, pay attention to fencing.

There's some real corruption going on.

Yeah.

Here, though, you find that the appetite seemingly has been insatiable.

Yeah, it's true.

And all of this coverage is originating from this would-be match for March 30th.

And you can see the video, of course, all around social media on X especially.

But it takes place at a tournament called the Cherry Blossom Open at the University of Maryland.

So at the beginning of this match, right before the referee told them to start, the fencer on the right, Stephanie Turner, got down on one knee and protested the inclusion of her trans opponent, Red Sullivan, in this event.

The referee came up to her and told her that it would be a black card if she refused a fence on the grounds of just refusing to fence an eligible opponent.

She said that she knew that, but that she was a woman, her opponent was a man, and that she wasn't going to fence that person.

So the referee left, presumably, to confirm that penalty with Bout Committee.

When he came back, he had, had, I suppose, confirmed that that was the correct penalty to issue and gave Turner a black card for refusing defense.

Meaning.

Meaning, exclusion from the tournament.

And look, as a sports fan, right, the idea of like an athlete protesting by taking a knee.

Yeah.

This had been previously a thing when Colin Kaepernick was doing this in the NFL was a thing that carried a very different tone when it came to Fox News coverage, when it came to Trump's administration.

Yes, that's true.

But here, Andrew, the U.S.

government is looking at this kneeling episode and

politicians are coming out of the woodwork to truly champion the bravery of the fencer who did it.

Ted Cruz, for instance, has a four-page letter, United States Senate letterhead dated April 7th, 2025, that he sends to who?

He sent that to the CEO of USA Fencing, Phil Andrews.

He claimed that USA fencing was in violation of President Trump's executive order keeping men out of women's sports.

And then, four days later, April 11th, Linda McMahon, the U.S.

Secretary of Education, announces the formation of a Title IX investigations team.

I think we're just making sure that everyone knows we're very serious about this.

This is a combination, as I said, of DOJ and Department of Education, because DOJ has the ability

to file criminal charges.

Department of Education does not.

So we'll investigate, but we will hold people accountable

on both ends where Department of Education might look at the funding mechanisms, but the Department of Justice can actually look at it from a criminal perspective.

And now, Andrew, I'm looking back at my laptop because tomorrow in Washington, D.C.,

I'm reading a

webpage on oversight.house.gov that is titled Doge Subcommittee Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene announces hearing on USA Fencing, allowing biological men to participate in women's events, in which Stephanie Turner, the fencer on the right that we've been talking about, is going to speak, as well as the board chair of USA Fencing, Damian Lefeld.

And he will be testifying at a hearing at 2 p.m.

Eastern.

So when we step back for a second here and just look at the effort that the U.S.

government is taking to investigate this story that we also have been investigating in our own parallel track.

What is the big big picture of thought that goes through your mind?

It would be nice if it actually appeared as if they wanted to learn something from this investigation.

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So I just need you to know that Andrew Fischel, who last appeared on PTFO in July 2024, is a world-class fencer and coach and referee and now whistleblower.

As we mentioned, the guy is uniquely obsessed with defending the integrity of his his sport.

And this is to the point where nobody in the world will watch or post more video of fencing than him.

He has these Instagram and YouTube accounts that serve as the sport's de facto global library, basically.

And so with USA fencing back in the news on the heels of the NCAA following President Trump's recent executive order, Executive Order 14201, quote, keeping men out of women's sports, end quote, Andrew and I decided to reconnect.

And first, this was because I personally was confused about what this highly controversial match that we were talking about even is.

It was held at the University of Maryland, but the event wasn't actually an NCAA event because again, Trump and the NCAA had banned trans athletes like Red Sullivan from competing with women at collegiate contests.

And so that part to me sounded weird.

But even more urgently, Andrew seemed seemed very eager to do what nobody in the media or especially the federal government seemed interested in doing,

which is the first thing that my instinct would be as a reporter, which is to say, you actually talked to the person

at the center of this controversy.

So just how hard was it to reach Red Sullivan?

It took me like 10 minutes from when I heard this story to make the connection.

Hi, what's up?

I'm Red.

I found Zat Wagner College, where I'm a history and education dual major.

I'm a sophomore

and I like to ride my bike and garden.

So not exactly the investigative

Odyssey.

No, not at all.

I saw that this was happening or several people had messaged me that this was happening.

I got sent a meme on Instagram and it had, I think, a couple million views, thousands of comments.

So I reached out through my network and was able to get her number extremely quickly.

We've heard a lot in the news about this incident and what Stephanie,

when we've heard Stephanie's side of the story, can you talk us through what happened from your perspective?

When the whole thing happens, she kneels.

I don't know what's going on because the referee comes up to her, talks to her, and then

heads off.

and like ask her, hey, like, what's up?

And all of a lot of what she has said where she says, you are a man, I am a woman, and this is a woman's event.

Um, and I will not offense you, like, with respect to you.

And my initial response was, bro, what, what are you doing?

The very basic question of

from a sports perspective, how good is Red Sullivan at fencing?

There's a spectrum of ratings from A being the best to E being the worst and then one unrated below that.

And Red is a D-rated fencer, which is fine.

Like it shows a basic level of technique and understanding, but it isn't anything extremely impressive.

Sorry.

Well, how does Red feel about that scouting report of herself?

I think she would probably find that fairly accurate.

I fenced almost an entire season in the NCAA on the women's team.

where

nothing like this has happened.

There's been no backlash to me fencing.

And it has been a historically mediocre season.

And there have been no issues with it until there was the NCAA ban.

So to just clarify, Red Sullivan no longer fencing for Wagner.

For Wagner, her college team, famously, thanks to the federal government.

And the opponent in question, the kneeler, the protester, Stephanie Turner, what's Stephanie's scouting report?

She's also a D-rated fencer.

I had never heard of her before this.

And in looking at her results, they're also fairly mediocre.

Like I would put the two of them at approximately the same level.

Which is to say that when it comes to the tournament that we are making this mountain out of, it was a deeply unserious, unimportant tournament.

Well, now you sound like an ass.

I mean, you need a certain amount of points to qualify for summer national championships.

And this is one of the last tournaments that allows you to do that.

So if you are fencing at this tournament with the goal of accumulating those points, it means you either didn't do well at the others or just didn't want to go to them.

And at that point, I think it's fair to say that it's just not that important.

So we have two, and I'm going to use this because I think it's actually a term, two D-list D-rated

D-rated fencers.

And Stephanie also not a college fencer?

I think she's 31.

What phase of the fencing trajectory is that at this point?

In order to qualify for tournaments that you need to go to to even qualify for the Olympics.

So like qualifiers for the qualifiers, you need to have at minimum a C rating.

And she does not have that.

So I don't know her.

I've never spoken to her.

I've tried to reach out to her, but it seems from the outside like this is just a casual fencer doing these tournaments for fun.

And so this tournament, when I hear it described by Fox News as an Olympic qualifier, again, we have investigated Olympic fencing.

You live in the elite levels.

That's your world.

This was not an Olympic event.

No, definitely not.

And anyone who says that doesn't know anything about athletics.

So this was an Olympic qualifying event, my understanding of it is.

Well, part of what was funny about seeing some of these clips is that even Stephanie Turner at one point seemed to be put in a position of knowing that,

obviously, as the fencer in question.

Yes.

And having to listen to this.

This was something that you had prepared all your life for.

It wasn't an Olympic qualifying event.

I'm sorry.

I had heard that this morning.

It wasn't.

It was an important event, though.

And this is something that you've been preparing for for an awfully long time.

The darting of the eyes, as he's insisting, as the anchor is insisting, this is important.

This is very, very, very important.

Spoke volumes.

It may well have been important to her.

That's completely fair.

But this is not something that anyone would be reasonable in saying they prepared for their entire life.

But when it comes to why this may actually be important to Stephanie Turner, which I want to take seriously here, part of the reason the story has been shaped this way is because the person that all of these outlets keep on interviewing is Stephanie Turner.

I find that the cause is pretty simple, as you say.

I mean, I'm a woman competing in women's sports, and men have a male advantage over me in female sports.

And now we're at the point that every parent in America

is immediately going to extrapolate a lot from that simple statement, right?

It's the eternal trans debate, which we've done many episodes of this show about.

Men have an advantage over women.

And I'm not even here with you today to even argue otherwise.

What I want to clarify simply is when it comes to Stephanie Turner's career and her fears about facing a male fencer on the level of physical safety, as one very popular argument goes, and then on the level of competitive disadvantage, which is the other one that we just heard articulated.

How do you assess that part of her story?

They both seem very silly to me.

As a high-level fencing coach, I can safely say that I have never, ever told one of my female fencers not to fence a male fencer because it was dangerous.

We encourage little kids to fence with high-level fencers all the time.

And I would think that-like literal children.

Yes.

I would think that like a small child fencing against an adult would be more quote-unquote dangerous than that.

But fencing is one of the safest sports that there is.

And everyone has something to gain in practice, regardless of who the opponent is.

So, just to recap for people who don't know how fencing works, fencing is a sport where literally the first time you touch the other person, everything stops.

Everything stops.

Yeah.

But this is where I just got to jump in here for a second in order to be maximally generous to Stephanie Turner and her philosophy, maybe.

Because even though fencing is a sport premised upon this electronic sensor system where the slightest brush will trigger a point and force a reset,

maybe Stephanie Turner just disagrees personally with Andrew Fischel and his mixed coaching philosophy that he articulated.

Maybe she believes that her weapon, and she competes in foil,

is this long and pointy and bendy object, and that is something to be far more fearful about than Andrew is.

Maybe it's the case that Stephanie Turner therefore did not want to compete in any way against a class of people whose physical and also competitive advantage was that much greater than hers.

And that is her right,

I suppose.

No matter how frivolous or inconsequential the tournament in question might be.

But there is something else that we should also consider here, which is that maybe

there might be another detail about the protesting fencer in question, Stephanie Turner, that Fox News and the Trump administration simply don't want you to realize.

The week before this competition, she knowingly participated in a mixed competition, which means that men and women are both allowed to sign up.

That tournament was extremely casual.

There were no points on the line, not a qualifier for anything, just a fun tournament.

But she fenced several men in that competition, and she actually did beat some of them.

So as far as the skill level goes, men may have physical advantages over women.

How that translates into the sport is up for debate.

I think at the top level, there is a significant difference, but at that level, I don't know how much there is.

And so much of fencing is about distance, tactics, timing, precision, that just pure strength is not such a gigantic advantage in the sport.

It's not meaningless, but it's not a gigantic advantage.

And she did beat several male opponents the week before.

So, this part, as I'm consulting the record books here, right?

So, Stephanie Turner, the weekend before she did her protest, she kneeled against Red Sullivan, faced, it seems, five men in a mixed tournament voluntarily with no issue.

In pool two of that tournament, she faced three male opponents, one 5-2 against a guy named Harrison Kovacs, won 5-2 against Luca Specter, lost 5-1 to Ian Flynn, who was a C-rated fencer who finished third in that tournament.

And then in elimination round, she beat Ethan Lee 15-12.

In the first round, beat Pow Chow Esteban 15-14,

then lost 15-5 to Luis Largespada, who got second place, also D-rated.

And that's how the tournament went.

Which is to say that, like, the whole horror of fencing an alleged man

i mean literally the week before she did all of that fence literal men yeah without an issue for safety and beating some of them so obviously the skill factor wasn't an issue either it feels like when it comes to stephanie turner claiming that the disqualification happened because of this protest because of these views that are from this place of integrity Can you clarify the rules governing integrity here?

What was the punishment and why did that punishment happen?

So the punishment was a black card, which is disqualification and a short probationary period afterwards for refusing to fence an eligible opponent.

In fencing, we do not get to pick our opponents.

And if we did, it would obviously be ridiculous.

In terms of the mechanics of how a black card, a disqualification occurs, you're saying this would happen for any reason.

If I refuse to fence you at a competition, then I would be black carded for the same, like in exactly the same manner.

I would receive the same probationary period.

It's not about trans, black, white, Asian, religious, whatever.

It's I am supposed to fence an opponent who's eligible.

And by refusing to do that, I am going to be disqualified.

And so when it comes to the letter, for instance, that Ted Cruz wrote to USA Fencing, claiming, quote, this young woman, Stephanie Turner, was set to face a man.

who now claims to be a transgender woman in a fencing bout, this gets to this other key complaint that has been circulated widely that is familiar to anybody who has covered trans athletes, which is that here is a man who chose to transition to women's sports simply to greedily and cunningly

gobble up all of these trophies.

And I should cite a poll that we here at Pablitoria Finds Out had commissioned actually back in March.

It's a Rasmusen poll.

And what we found was that a majority of Republicans think that biologically male athletes are becoming transgender specifically to win championships in women's sports.

sports.

This is 39% who say that's very likely, 18% say somewhat likely.

This is a pervasive belief.

So I think that's pretty silly as well.

There have been,

to my knowledge, no examples of people in fencing who were bad and then transitioned and suddenly became good.

And this is a process that, as I understand, takes a long time to complete.

You need to have an appointment with a doctor to diagnose you with gender dysphoria syndrome.

And then you need to be on hormones for at least a year demonstrating consistent tests of below a certain testosterone level.

And it's not like if I declared myself a woman, I could just compete in a competition, a women's competition tomorrow.

That's not what's happening.

What did you learn about Red Sullivan's own alleged overnight decision to compete as a woman?

It took a while.

She told me that in high school, she was having thoughts of transitioning for a while.

And when she finally took it seriously enough to go see a doctor, it took, I think, a year to get that appointment.

I had to get a consultation appointment to like get diagnosed with gender dysphoria in order to get more bones.

In order to get that appointment, I had to go through my general practitioner.

And from there, I had to book an appointment, which the wait time on that was about a year.

So after I got the consultation appointment, which took a year,

I had to wait another six months in order to make follow-up appointments, in order to get my medicine and then learn how to do the injections.

She was put on hormones for over a year before she was allowed to compete in the women's category.

And there's also the timer where at that point then, the timer starts where it's now you have to wait to be a year on hormones.

So the entire time that I've been in the NCAA, I have been on hormones.

So in a way, with the men's events, I've had a physical disadvantage because these are men with male hormones.

And also the longer you're on hormones, the more like you will, your muscles will atrophy.

I also have a few other stories about this.

A friend of mine coaches high school in New Jersey and she has coached trans athletes before.

And there was a trans athlete on her team team who was doing okay on the men's foil team, wanted to transition, was told, like, we don't have a spot for you on the women's team right now.

So you would just be basically a bench warmer.

And that person chose to be a female bench warmer rather than to continue to start as a male because that's just who this person was.

And that was very important to her.

What I think people miss.

in all of the narrative being spun is that the reason that these athletes that you go and actually interview, what they actually say and prove all of the time is that they're doing this because this is who they are.

Yeah.

It's not

this scheme.

Can I read a tweet that I was sent on this topic?

That's pretty funny.

We are a tweet recitation safe space.

Okay.

Thank God.

So I don't remember who said this because I just have a screenshot of the actual text, but it says, how many men who dream of being top-tier professional athletes are willing to take female hormones, lose their muscle mass, lose their athletic edge, feminize their appearance, and live their lives as a woman in order to beat girls in a sport that pays less, has fewer sponsors, has a much diminished public profile?

How many boys are willing to do this to play softball, volleyball, et cetera?

It's not happening.

I mean, if anything, Andrew, what we've learned about what it's like to be a trans female athlete.

And even if you are successful, you're ostracized for that.

We clearly know that it rules.

Yeah.

Like, this is awesome.

Who wouldn't want to sign up for the experience that Red Sullivan has clearly signed up for?

I mean, I, before this, have

not posted anything online that I have private profiles on everything.

And that's on purpose.

I don't want that.

I didn't want that smoke.

And I think a key part that also gets missed all the time in the coverage is that people presume that it is open season.

Like there are no rules.

Yeah, there are a lot of very specific rules.

Which is to say that Red Sullivan played by the rules.

She did everything she was supposed to do.

So your perspective is somebody who's been inside of USA fencing, which has been governed by a policy.

It's worth reminding everybody that here's the policy, quote, according to usafencing.org, Athletes being treated with testosterone suppression medication for the purposes of USA fencing sanctioned competitions may continue to compete in men's events, but may only compete in women's events after completing one calendar year, 12 months, of testosterone suppression treatment.

Proof of compliant hormone therapy must be provided prior to competition.

But now,

in terms of what the government is trying to do from this top-down way,

what is their new proposal for what the rules should be?

It seems that their new subtle proposal for what the rules should be is: you just can't do that anymore.

And if you just want a sense here of how much time our cash-strapped federal government is now devoting to banning trans fencers, just despite the fact that the only example they got is a D-rated fencer at a meaningless tournament for casuals who got the same punishment anyone anywhere would get if they withdrew from any match, even though also this same fencer had also defeated a series of actual biological men the literal weekend before,

there is something that I think you should know here.

Because last week, on account of all of the energy generated by by this single stupid story, House Republicans subpoenaed the board chair of USA Fencing.

And they did it in order to force him to testify in front of Congress during this giant hearing that is taking place tomorrow that we mentioned before.

Previously, USA Fencing had been trying to avoid Marjorie Taylor Greene and this Inquisition/slash circus, which also naturally involved multiple letters from Doge.

But now, USA Fencing's entire legal status as an NGB, meaning a national governing body, which is the nonprofit in charge of organizing and promoting and running the whole Olympic pipeline for fencing in America,

is at stake.

They're dealing with kind of pressure from two different directions.

One is the government telling them that they have to change the policy or they'll lose their NGB status.

But the other is, I don't think that they're allowed to be less inclusive than the parent organizations or they would lose the NGB status anyway.

So it's like being caught between a rock and a hard place here.

But essentially, we have to do what our parent and grandparent organizations are doing in terms of inclusivity rules.

Right.

And as of right now, the USOPC and the IOC both allow the inclusion of transgender athletes under the eligibility criteria that we've talked about already.

But you should also know that this entire equilibrium, quite obviously, feels like it's on the brink.

Last month, the head of of the USOPC, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said about the trans policy question, quote, it is not our role to take on that position, end quote, deferring instead to the international federations.

Meanwhile, speaking of international competition, you may have heard that the next Summer Olympic Games are in Los Angeles in 2028.

And apparently, LA 28's host contract requires the United States to guarantee access to, quote, all qualified athletes.

That's the term, all qualified athletes, which might logically conflict with Executive Order 14201 because EO 14201 is actively trying to ban qualified trans athletes.

And then there's the fact that Trump's Attorney General and his education secretary continue to threaten a criminal investigation, yes, a criminal investigation, over the alleged injustice suffered by one Stephanie Turner.

And so, what's the vibe, Andrew, around fencing, USA fencing, specifically, when it comes to just criminal threats and legislation and the top cabinet members for President Trump all taking personal interest in this?

My personal feeling is that the Secretary of Education and a few others might

have some use for a little bit more education on this issue.

So you're saying that the Doge hearing run by Marjorie Taylor Greene, you don't expect to get that level of elucidation.

No, I don't.

Based on what I've seen from her in the past in confirmation hearings and in meetings she's held, she doesn't seem to be interested in getting to the bottom of this.

And I do think that there are legitimate questions and concerns on this topic, but I don't think that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene is interested in finding out anything like that.

So I want to just elucidate myself a couple of thoughts as I now process all of the reporting that you've helped us do here, which is that number one, there is a very familiar and established playbook for athletes who are not

among the best in their sport, or in this case, anything close to it, claiming to be victims, even though they may or may not have fenced male fencers the week before to no issue, no concern about physical safety or competitive inequity.

So there is that, just the idea of, well, now I can be a spokesperson invited to Washington, being platformed by the most important federal officials in our country.

And there's a second thought, because as we replay some of these videos, Andrew, I think you and I are noticing a similar thing here.

A trend, yes, in many of them.

Which is that, yes, the voices you're hearing, if you're just listening to this, are addressing the trans athlete scandal.

But the visuals,

what else are you seeing?

Let's say in the bottom right corner of those Fox News clips.

I'm noticing the Dow is plummeting.

Was a man who had previously competed on the men's team at Wagner.

Just keeps going down, yeah.

This is a CBS News special report.

I'm John Dickerson in New York, where the closing bell on Wall Street just rang.

The markets closed down.

The Dow slid roughly 1,600 points.

The SP 500 fell more than 4.5%.

Wall Street's tariff tantrum accelerated into the end of an historically brutal week with China retaliating for President Trump's punitive tariffs and forcing investors to price in fast-rising risks of a U.S.

recession.

The SP 500.

It is no coincidence, I think, to either of us.

It seems that

the trans athlete tends to be even more loudly proclaimed as a problem when there are other actual

real fing problems.

Yeah, very real problems.

I mean, I cannot think of a more familiar option in a playbook than is there a trans female athlete out there somewhere that someone feels victimized by?

That we can talk about really loudly for the next 20 minutes, yeah.

So we don't talk about tariffs or the rule of law or

mass deportation even.

Or any of those other very unimportant topics.

Or the general lack of information security around our Defense Department.

Or the fact that conservative justices are actively saying that the guy who appointed them is not obeying the basic tenets of

the Constitution.

But there is, there is

Stephanie Turner.

Yeah, very important.

And so at at this point, I just feel obligated to point out, as I do in pretty much every episode about trans athletes that we have ever done, and we have done three of them before this one, incidentally, that I do still think there are real scientific debates and questions to be raised here.

There are real discussions, for instance, about what the specific hormone policy should be.

How do we construct a regimen of rules?

How much irreversible competitive advantage is there for an athlete who went through male puberty as compared to an athlete who never did.

These are all fair objections, fair questions, fair discussions.

But what is so undeniable to me, the more I report on this story, is how unbelievably overblown and intentionally dishonest and politically convenient the coverage of this issue continues to be.

And now that coverage has come to fencing.

So what I wanted to do here also was ask our fencing expert, our resident whistleblower, Andrew Fischel, to open our eyes to an actual cheating scandal, one that might truly warrant your attention here.

Inside his poorly written spy novel of a sport.

What the f is up with this buzzer?

Right.

So in this is not a news story.

It's something that happened a long time ago.

But in 1976, in the pentathon category of the Summer Olympic Games, a Soviet fencer named Boris Onishenko actually had engineered a device inside of his epe where when he pressed a button, it would activate his scoring mechanism, which is to say that when he pressed a button, he essentially gave himself a point.

So what he was doing was he was lunging near his opponent and then pressing the button to make it look like he got a point.

So for those, again, unfamiliar, in fencing, there's an electronic scoring system in which touches are in fact registered via some electronic sensor system with wires that of course evolved over time.

But it seems, Andrew, not so much that the buzzer has entirely disappeared from the corruption of the competitive landscape.

In the case of Boris Onoshenko, this situation actually led to a new rule about where the wires are placed inside the guard.

And over time, there have been other rules that have changed the way that equipment works to prevent tampering.

And the most recent instance of that that I'm aware of is in 2020, body cord casings were made transparent because of a situation that was never officially resolved one way or the other.

But there was a fencer who

many fencers were complaining when they hit her, their

point would not register.

And when they tested afterwards, everything seemed fine.

Which is to say that fencing never lacks for creative problems.

Yeah.

I think I heard at one point that something like half of the rules about equipment were because someone found a way to cheat with them at some point.

Right.

Which is to say that there is cheating.

Like the episode we did together about the corruption of judges.

Like massive.

Again, arguably singular in the already deeply corrupt landscape of Olympic sports.

Like fencing seems to have this issue, this existential problem when it comes to competitive inequity.

But this fencer, can we put a name to this fencer?

Who are we talking about?

And can we walk through some of the video here?

So this fencer's name is Lucia Lucarini.

She was accused of having this happen in the years between 2015 and 2018 when she was doing well.

And a common like retort to that is people who are doing well have opponents who object to them doing well, but there were videos being passed around of her with dozens of clips in them of her getting hit cleanly and the machine not registering a point.

How was she getting away with this?

How did this scheme allegedly operate?

There was a

person who was working with her who had a machine that was operated by either pressing a button or a switch and when the switch was active it would prevent

her machine from registering touches scored on her and so hypothetically if i was helping you in this way i would have the machine active while you were fencing and as soon as you were scored on and it blocked it i would just deactivate the machine and when someone tested on you it would just work normally And so her alleged accomplice here, the person who she was working with in this theory of corruption, was who?

It was alleged that it was her father who was helping her do this.

But the reason we feel comfortable describing the allegation is because this is not originally levied by either of us here.

This is something that it seems has been videotaped by, in this case, what kinds of people?

She ended up winning the Italian championships, I believe, in 2018.

And When this happened, there was a match earlier in the day that a person refereeing her thought a lot of strange things were happening.

So during the semifinal of that tournament, this referee actually sat behind the father and recorded over his shoulder what he was doing while watching his daughter fence.

So the videos that we're about to show you here, this is taken by an Italian referee of this Italian fencer's dad, whose hand is, I will just editorially comment here, is

very awkwardly in his pocket.

Yes.

So essentially, in this clip, the fencer on the left hits the fencer on the right, and you can kind of see the blade hitting target cleanly.

But then, if you look at the same point from the side,

Her dad is doing something in his pocket, which is a little bit awkward.

There's no clapping or cheering.

Very graphic, the motion.

Yeah.

It's a bit odd for sure.

I mean, the rest of his body is sort of like spasming and his hand remains in his pocket, also doing its own spasm.

Yeah.

I would be concerned for reasons if I did not know about buzzer technology, which is what I am going to gently observe here.

It's very odd.

And again, nothing was conclusively proven, but enough people thought this was weird that a referee who was in charge of one of her matches earlier did this.

At the end of that competition, they actually confiscated all the equipment of all the top four fencers to examine it, but they did it after the medal ceremony, so about 10 minutes after.

And during that period of time, that equipment was not watched over or attended.

Right, right.

So in terms of the seriousness that the sport has undertaken their own investigation with, how do you describe what's happened since that controversy?

So when that happened, the Italian Federation said that the proof was inconclusive.

They couldn't figure it out.

But but a self-proclaimed expert wrote an email to International Fencing and had about 20 different people who were high-ranking in the FIE at the time detailing a bunch of matches that this fencer was involved with and situations that this person felt were anomalies, as he called them.

And he evaluated them on three criteria.

One, that the anomalies occurred almost exclusively with this fencer on the strip.

Two, they were pretty much almost all in benefit of this one particular fencer.

And three, and I think this is the most compelling point of all, when this fencer was not present on the strip, all scoring apparatus worked pretty much normally for every other match of that day, of that tournament.

It's just when she was present, she seemed to have a lot of anomalies going in her favor.

And when she wasn't present, everything seemed fine.

And so when it comes to just being fair to the Italian fencer in question, Lucia Lucarini,

I know that you offered her the opportunity to comment in any way on the record and what was her position on that?

She did send me something, but she also said that she did not want me to make any sort of comment on it at all.

Understood.

She didn't want to have to comment on this on the record.

And I can understand that this was a stressful time for her, but I feel that it's very important to, when something like this happens, to make people aware of it so that one, anyone who's considering doing something hypothetically similar in the future would think twice about it.

And also just so that people are aware that this is going on because this person is still competing.

Right.

And as far as I'm aware, there haven't been any anomalies since then, but this did happen.

It wasn't acknowledged at all.

And this person is still active in the sport.

Right.

So in other words, if anybody out there wants to, you know, have their dad

put his hand in his right pocket and just hit a buzzer over and over again, as happened, by the way, in more examples than the one we just played.

I have been sent dozens of examples of this in the past couple of weeks.

I mean, I would say,

yeah, just maybe, maybe be aware that at least one sports adjacent podcast has taken an interest in knowing why and how any of this is

happening.

Yeah, it's always confusing to me that people are willing to even consider doing something like that when you

like.

I want to beat people because I'm better than them.

I don't want to beat people because I'm like sneaking coins under the table in a board game or I'm manipulating the equipment or

have some deal with a referee or something.

I just want to prove that I'm better than other people.

And

I just, I just don't understand.

I don't know.

It's confusing to me.

You sound, Andrew,

like such a woke lib.

Yeah, maybe.

So at the end of every episode of Pablo Tory Finds Out, Andrew Fischel, as you're familiar, we talk about what we found out today.

And what I'm finding out is not something that I necessarily expected to find out in fencing, but it's one that I certainly have been familiar with, which is the amount of attention

that our actual government, let alone its propaganda news arms,

are paying,

are actively paying to that doesn't matter.

It's so irrelevant.

Continues to make my jaw drop.

Yeah.

Like for real, like I'm not saying that there aren't, as you put it, like actual debates around the science and the regulations and competitive inequities

between men and women.

Like, we have done episodes about this.

We reiterate that actual serious discussion being valuable and necessary.

But when it comes to just the priorities our country has right now, it's just insane.

Yeah, it is.

Actively insane how much time we're spending on this topic generally, but also these sorts of athletes specifically, man.

Yeah.

Even this specific topic of something that happened in

the preliminary round of an irrelevant tournament that just was between two fencers who had almost no chance to win.

Right.

The whole thing.

Like, it's just, it's very silly.

Meanwhile, though, I do wish that when I'm watching Fox News the next time, that I myself could have a buzzer that I could press that prevented anybody on that side of the aisle who cares so deeply about this topic to not score any points for all of the hits they are making.

I like to dream too.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

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