Tom Tully thought it was a joke when he received an e-mail from four-time Olympic fencer Dorina Vaccaroni. The founder of the San Rafael-based Marin Fencing Academy thought one of his friends was pulling a fast one on him.
“I got an e-mail one day that was kind of in broken English,” Tully said. “She said she was coming to take over my club in Marin. She didn’t mean it to sound that way. That’s just how the translation came across.”
He talked to one of the more well-known women fencers in all of Italy on the phone and she told him she was coming to Marin. He told her a limo would be waiting at the airport.
Still, not certain if this was for real, he waited at Napoli restaurant in downtown San Rafael while enjoying some wine.
Sure enough, Vaccaroni exited the limo and joined Tully at his table. That was two years ago and Vaccaroni has been an instructor at Tully’s academy ever since.
Vaccaroni, who has won a gold, silver, and bronze medal spanning four Olympics from Moscow in 1980 to Barcelona in 1992, wanted to live in Marin to teach fencing and also found it to be a great place to train as an ultracyclist.
After competing in the Olympics in fencing as a foilist (a foil is one of the three weapons used in fencing), she switched to cycling and placed fourth in ultracycling in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
A good fit
Marin has become a good base for her to teach fencing and also train seven to eight hours a day on the bike. She taught in Orange County and Los Angeles before that, but never felt the sense of belonging like she does in Marin.
“I tried some places in California, (Marin) is most similar to me,” Vaccaroni said. “The food is good here. It’s a good place for my bike and it’s different than other climates. I also study art and the people here are different than any other place.”
Vaccaroni, 54, begins her day on her bike usually at 6:30 a.m., training until about 2:30 p.m. She often rides from her home in Fairfax up to Mount Tamalpais. She teaches at MFA from 4-9:30 p.m. and then swims at the Bay Club for a few hours.
“Very few will attempt to ride with her,” Tully said. “It’s very intense.”
Her intensity can also be felt on the piste — the strip where a fencing match takes place.
“She changed the psychology of the club,” Tully said. “She’s a sweet lady, but extremely intense on workouts. The bar seriously rose here. She keeps everybody on their toes and we have more competing at national level than before.”
She is well-known in the fencing community and has a cult-like following in her native Italy.
“Everyone knows her,” Tully said. “She is like the Michael Jordan of fencing.”
The three disciplines of fencing are foil, sabre, and épée. A match consists of two fencers on a 15×2-meter strip. Winning points are made through the contact with an opponent. Fencing is one of the earliest Olympic sports, where the Italians have had the most success, with 127 total medals, four more than France.
Fencing “is a combination of fighting, art, and dance,” Tully said. “It’s individual psychology, like playing chess. It’s a sport with a background of a lot of ferocity. You are trying to kill someone, but evolved to more psychological. You are playing with someone’s mind on the strip. You are setting traps like chess. Giving up touches and changing routine.”
Vaccaroni, who has a Kinesiology degree, has her fencing students stretch and run for the first 45 minutes of each class. It is then decided who will be the select few worthy of getting one-on-one instruction with her for the next couple of hours. She works with students of all ages.
Fencing “is a sport of mental and body together,” Vaccaroni said. “It’s not only physical. It’s impossible without a good mental state.”
Vaccaroni started her classical training of fencing at the age of 5 in Venice. By 16, she was competing in the Olympics, where she placed sixth in individual foil. She earned a bronze individually four years later at the Summer Games in Los Angeles and then won silver in Seoul, Korea and gold in Barcelona as a member of Italy’s foil team.
Making an impact
Lana Devic of San Rafael has been with MFA for four years and has benefited from the tutelage of Vaccaroni.
Devic will be traveling to Richmond, Va., in mid-April to compete nationally to try to improve on her E rating.
“As soon as she arrived (at MFA), she became my idol,” Devic said of Vaccaroni. “She makes fencers. Just the way she coaches and teaches you…with so much passion. It’s because of her passion, you want to succeed and thrive.”
At 76, Ernie Simard is the academy’s oldest fencer.
When Vaccaroni learned that Simard was a fellow Olympian — he was an alternate for the U.S. equestrian team in the 1960 Olympics in Rome — he knew he was in trouble.
“She told me, ‘Oh, good. You have the right attitude,’” Simard said. “Then she works my tail off.
“She’s an excellent teacher. She’s won everything you can. In Italy, you have to have a license to teach (fencing), but they only give licenses to men.”
Vaccaroni has helped Simard, a D-rated fencer, with his distance and lengthening his lunges.
“She has a pretty structured approach,” Simard said. “She pays a lot of attention to classical styles of advances and lunges, which has worked for 300 years. There’s no reason why it should be changed.”
Tully is hoping to add wheelchair fencing to the academy next fall, which is something Vaccaroni has taught many times at the World Cup level.
It depends on if they can get support from the Veteran’s Administration to support the vets’ training with her at MFA.
Vaccaroni will be going back to Italy for July and August to train and compete in the Ultracycle Dolomitica. Tully and two others will join her as her support team.
“Dorina is without doubt, the purest example of an athlete I have ever met,” Tully said. “I’m both terrified and looking forward to the big race this year.”
