The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO - Match-Fixing, the Oligarch and the Ivy League: Inside the Most Corrupt Sport at the Olympics

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

We tumble down the rabbithole of the global match-fixing scandal that’s quietly tearing apart the U.S. Olympic fencing team, ahead of their trip to Paris this month. And we investigate how it all connects to a spiraling refereeing crisis that takes us from Harvard and Princeton to the very top of the International Olympic Committee — and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Where one of the world’s 100 richest people, Alisher Usmanov, has allegedly exported a culture of bribery and corruption that’s scared pretty much everybody in sabre fencing away from talking, on the record. Until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is. How many, by percentage would you say, referees right now are corrupted in Saber Fencing? If you have, let's say you take the top 20 referees, about half. Right after this ad. referees? About half. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Coming up, good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash y amex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Okay, so the first thing that I need you to know about this rabbit hole I'm about to dive into is that I did not give a f*** about saber fencing or any kind of fencing at all. But one day recently, this was May 31st, 2024 at 3.53 p.m. Eastern, I got a notification on my phone because somebody had tagged me in a tweet. And this tweet from loyal PTFL listener at Jim Jimson Jr. demanded to know how I had

not yet done a five-part series on a first-time Olympian I had never heard of before, a saber fencer named Mitchell Serin. Mitchell Serin, who was about to represent the United States in Paris in now a couple weeks. And while, again, I knew nothing about fencing, what I immediately found out was that I specifically should have known about Mitchell Sarin. Because Mitchell Sarin, it turns out, is a Harvard graduate who is also Filipino-American and was also born in the New York, New Jersey area, and the dude loves Star Wars.

Like deeply, unironically, unapologetically loves Star Wars. To the point where the whole reason he became obsessed with saber fencing in the first place, the Olympic sport he is really good at, was because of Star Wars, as he explained in an interview with ESPN. I was always obsessed with the trilogy. I grew up watching that. Every time I passed by a toy store, I was asking my mom or my dad to buy me like a lightsaber there or any sword they had. So I had this huge collection of plastic lightsabers. I would ask my parents, I'd ask friends, and I'd ask my older sister to fight with me in the yard with these lightsabers all the time. And my mom

was pretty fed up. She was complaining to her doctor. This kid's nuts. He just likes playing with lightsabers. Luckily, the doctor was like one of the top clubs in the country. He's right by you. You should bring him there. Now, I just need to pause here to note that based on the scouting report you have heard so far, there has never been another athlete who is more like me. I suppose demographically, I am Mitchell Serin. Except, you know, unathletic, arguably. But the whole entire thing at this point just started feeling a little eerie.

And so by the time I was done listening to another interview that Mitchell Serin had done, this time with the official USA Fencing podcast, I was also kind of getting into saber fencing, which is the only type of fencing apparently where you can score points by slashing someone's torso or head using the blade of your sword. This was the thing that Mitchell himself learned when he visited that club that you know his mom's doctor had recommended he visit near his hometown in New Jersey. I went there and then Oleg, who's been my coach since, it was a Sabre club but the other

weapons were there and he wanted to just show me the rules of all of them. He showed me F-A, he showed me foil, and obviously you have to poke an F-A or foil, and then he showed me Sabre and I was like, oh that's the one, that's the one that like Anakin and Luke Skywalker use, I gotta do that one, like I don't want to poke. I still love Star Wars, so it's really cool that I'm here now. I do feel like I lived out my dream, definitely. And that is objectively a cool story. It's the story of a kid achieving his dream.

It's just not the story that I actually wanted to tell you today. Because the reason I became obsessed with saber fencing and the reason I wanted to start this episode with the story of Mitchell Sarin, this Harvard-educated Filipino-American kid from my part of the country who also loves Star Wars, is because I now have very good reason to believe that the sport that Mitchell Serin loves might actually be the most corrupt sport in the entire Olympics. And that Mitchell Serin might not deserve to be an Olympian at all. Forget what the calendar says, football season is right around the corner, and that means best ball week at DraftKings is not far behind.

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Enter the best ball $15 million contest by 9524 to get one bonus entry. $20 entry fee required. Reward expires at contest lock on 9524. See terms at draftkings.com slash DFS. Okay, so in order to understand how I went from thinking I had found my new favorite Olympian to suddenly being deep inside a rabbit hole of global corruption, I first need you to meet the person who helped open my eyes to what is really happening inside a sport that I, once again, knew nothing about. Because Andrew Fischl is a world-class saber fencer

and coach and referee who is personally connected to the Mitchell-Saron part of the story, which is how I first discovered Andrew. But the reason Andrew is sitting in our studio, wearing fencing gear, incidentally, emblazoned with Team USA logos, is because Andrew is finally ready to say what so many other fencers and coaches and referees are still too afraid to publicly admit. Many people have told me that they have been offered bribes either to throw matches or

in the case of referees to flip the outcome of matches. It's disgusting to think about. It's getting out of hand. And when I started sniffing around saber fencing in earnest, this elite Ivy League Olympic sport, the more I kept hearing the same exact sentiment that referees in particular have been flipping the outcome of matches to a crazy extent. Besides Andrew, seven high-level sources would tell me in interviews that Sabre has been hiding a match-fixing crisis that has now spun out of control, and that they've been hiding it, successfully so far, in plain sight.

You see, the goal of fencing is to touch the other fencer first, something an electronic scoring system can adjudicate objectively with lights and wires, and they have all that stuff. But Saber's rule book by design requires a uniquely constant referee interpretation, it turns out. For instance, almost half the time, Saber fansers will slash each other within milliseconds of each other, virtually simultaneously.

And when that happens by rule, the referee has to pick who gets the point. And they're supposed to do this based on rules and terms like right of way and initiation of attack in the first zone. But the problem is also the alibi, the perfect excuse, for a truly corrupt referee, which is that every single one of these calls can apparently go either way. The rule book of fencing is such that you're trying to create verbal descriptions of these actions

that happen within fractions of seconds so fast and not just one person doing the action by themselves but how it relates to another person. So there's there's no way you could ever possibly adequately capture all of that with words but the wording is so vague that there's no real way to check whether someone is correct or incorrect. And two top current referees could have a long argument about an obvious action. The explanation can just be, well, this is the way that I see it, and that's the end of the conversation.

Right. I have spoken to not just you, who has refereed high-level fencing, but I've talked to current anonymous international fencing referees who all say that the power that referees have it's too high is Almost incomparable compared to other sports. I would say that you're basically giving the referee The power to make whatever decision they want because of unclear criteria It's like even just the the tininess of this community I also want to point this out right Olympic sport you think about everybody knows everybody else to the point where something happens in saber fencing that I was flabbergasted to learn which is that

Referees are also coaches. Yep in most cases. I would say most referees are coaches as well It's quite a strange dynamic. It's crazy. Yeah, that's a better way to put it. I've actually been in a situation where I have fenced someone in a competition had their obviously their coach was coaching against me. And then in the next competition be refereed by that coach. And what if for example, I behaved like a in that match and the coach was holding a grudge against me? Well, that coach is now my referee in the next tournament.

And if he wants me to lose, it's not gonna be that difficult to do. And it would be very difficult to provide any sort of evidence of a conflict of interest in that situation. Because the entire sport is a conflict of interest. It seems like that a lot of the time. in that situation. Because the entire sport is a conflict of interest. It seems like that a lot of the time. All of which now brings us back to Mitchell Sarin, the Filipino-American, Harvard-educated, Star Wars-loving, first-time Olympian that we started with. Because Andrew Fischl, who is from

New York, actually went on to work with the Harvard fencing team, and he is also someone that Mitchell has known since Mitchell, who is from New Jersey, was 12. I've competed against Mitchell before, even as recently as last year. I have ref'd him before. I've traveled with him to World Cups. I actually really like him as a person. But here's the thing about Andrew. Nobody films and watches and uploads more video of Sabre fencing than he does. It's to the point where Andrew's popular Instagram and YouTube accounts have become

Sabre's de facto video library. Because for all of its Ivy League prestige, with tournaments in Madrid and Budapest, and Milan, fencing, again, is tiny and kind of broke. I mean, it's legitimately underfunded. Lots of world-class matches do not even get videotaped. And so people from all across the world will regularly send Andrew their videos, alongside their information, their intel, which is how Andrew suddenly found himself one day looking at Mitchell's path through the most crucial The first time someone brought up that something weird was going on was at the 2023 Madrid World Cup. He went 6-0 in his pools, which is the best you can do.

When you are fencing in your pool matches, everybody gets an indicator and the lowest indicator you can get is minus 30 indicating that you lost 30 touches Didn't score a single point the best one you can possibly get is plus 30 Indicating that you won every touch and didn't lose a single point at World Cup levels plus 30 I have literally never seen it happen on the senior World Cup circuit and He went plus 27. I think in this pool, which also is insane. Like an all-time performance. Yeah, basically. And I congratulated him afterwards. I was like, I like that is just amazing.

I'm in awe right now. Like, like nice job. And when I was telling the other people, like, did you see how well Mitchell does? They're like, yeah, to circle the name Malenchev, because Vasyl Malenchev, you should know, is not just some random referee. Malenchev, it turns out, is the number one saber referee in the entire world. It's a title that he has won by vote from his fellow top officials seven years in a row now. Malenchev has also worked the last four Olympic games and he judged final rounds at each of them. He is widely regarded as the best referee in the world and certainly the one with the most political power. I've worked for him at cadet international events when I was refereeing overseas.

Which are like junior levels. Even younger. So junior in fencing is 20 and under, cadet is 17 and under. So he's been like the head referee at those tournaments, and he tells us, this is the procedure for the today, these are the new rules that we're enforcing or trying. So he has a tremendous amount of sway, and he was someone I had always really respected a lot. It was weird the frequency that I saw this fencer not only getting this specific referee but the fact that he was doing so well with this referee specifically and in the direct elimination matches there were always a bunch of very strange calls and always in favor of Mitchell Soren.

How would you characterize what the U.S. fencing community has been doing as these allegations have been swirling around Mitchell? Let's start with him specifically. United States fencing hasn't done very much. I got an email recently from an anonymous source which had a bunch of statistics in it about how frequently this specific referee is being put on bouts for this specific fencer only during the qualification period. All these statistics together

just kind of make you raise your eyebrows. And once you notice a pattern like this, it's really difficult to unnotice it. And so this is where I should say that I have not found a confession letter or a check or anything signed by Vasil Malenchev. What I have done is reviewed these statistical analyses of Mitchell-Saron. What is clear is that over and over again, at these high-stakes Olympic qualifiers in

cities like Madrid and Budapest and Milan, Malenchev kept getting assigned, improbably, to Mitchell's bouts, despite the fact that referee assignments are supposed to be randomized, by rule. But even more conspicuously, whenever Mitchell got raft by Malenchev, he performed statistically like an Olympic gold medalist. But when anybody else refereed Mitchell, he was mostly just mortal or worse. Like statistically speaking, he was more than four times worse

than he was with Malenchev. But you don't even have to take my word for it on this stuff because in December of 2023, USA Fencing itself wrote a private letter addressed to Mitchell Sarin that I was able to review. The governing body noted in writing, the statistically improbable volume of referee assignments, and they warned Mitchell that, quote, USA fencing is in possession of data that shows, more likely than not, referential calls being made. To that end, the letter continued, we write to formally put you on notice that we are

aware of this alleged manipulation of the sport." But the even crazier thing about this letter is that it wasn't just addressed to Mitchell Serra. It was also addressed to another Ivy League student and first-time Olympian herself. Who is Tatyana Nazlimov in this story? She is the daughter of Vitaly Nazlimov, who is the owner of Nazlimov Fencing in Maryland. And he is the son of Vladimir Nazlimov, once a very successful fencer for the Soviet Union.

He moved to the US and became a coach at Ohio State. He created a very successful program here. High level, most high motivation for any athlete is Olympic Games. But not everybody can make it. But anyway, we have to see this. She comes from a very strong fencing dynasty. And she's now at Princeton, so obviously a pretty smart person as well.

We'll show as B-roll some of the clips that have been suspicious when it comes to calls that she has received in her favor. But really, the part of the video that you posted on your account with Tatiana that I want to highlight for just a casual observer, it's not even the thing that's happening on the strip where the fencing takes place. Right. It's not about the fencing itself.

It's about what's happening next to it. The referee started making a bunch of weird calls in her favor, and it seemed like the referee was being signaled by another referee to make those calls. And so I was given this footage and basically was able to find someone who was recording at the same time on the strip opposite of this one, filming this way. Right. And luckily, that parent happened to just have this other referee in frame while he

was signaling to the primary referee what he thought the call should be. It's a remarkable video because it is found footage that again, you as the Nexus hub of all of this stuff is winding up with. But you see on the right side of the screen, here is not the ref, but the ref's buddy seemingly signaling to the ref who is deferring and like waiting to seemingly see what his buddy's gonna tell him to do. Looking over, basically asking for advice, and then the guy like pointing in one direction, like small enough that it wouldn't really be visible from behind. Yes, and given the dearth of video angles, something that seemingly they thought no one would ever notice. Yeah, probably. The craziest part though of this video is that on the right side, above the referee's

buddy who is doing this sort of semi-subtle signaling, is who? Is the coach of this fencer. He is essentially leaning over the barrier, talking to this referee on the sideline who's not supposed to be involved in any way. For this referee to actually get the attention of the person who's currently working, signal him in a specific direction like this is the correct call. And in my opinion, for those calls to be incorrect is just unbelievably inappropriate. In these crucial moments that determine who's going to be on the US Olympic team. And you can watch the videos. They're in their raw form on my YouTube channel.

And when you watch those videos, the videos from this match, which was held in San Jose, which you realize immediately is how unsubtle all of this is. Because you can clearly see that the guy who was talking to the ref's buddy over on the right was in fact Tatiana Naslimov's personal coach, a guy who was also a notable Olympic referee himself. And it is kind of remarkable how little that dude was trying to hide. But even less subtle was the timing of all of this, But even less subtle was the timing of all of this, because this San Jose incident we're talking about happened in January of this year. And so you may recall that USA Fencing had formally warned Mitchell and Tatiana about referee manipulation in that letter I quoted before

just a couple weeks prior to this, in December. And in fact, I also found out that USA Fencing had sent a separate letter to the International Fencing Federation, the FIE as it's called, in December as well. And what USA Fencing did was warn the global governing body of fencing about their number one referee, Vasil Malenchev, who had demonstrated, quote,

likely favoritism, end quote, towards two Americans, Mitchell Sarin and Tatiana Naslimov. And yet, nobody really seemed to care about that either. USA Fencing sent something to the FIE requesting that Malenchev not be allowed to referee either of those fencers. Sarin or Nazlimov. Sarin or Nazlimov. And right after this request was made, Malenchev refereed Sarin in another pool. And Sarin I think went plus 25 in that pool.

Perfect. It's not just about what's actually happening because nobody knows what's actually happening. More important than that is the appearance of what's happening. And the appearance here is that certain Americans are receiving preferential treatment from certain referees. And when they've taken steps to try to alleviate that problem, they've basically just been given a middle finger to the face. And so you say, fine thing is like, okay, we should probably try to nip us in the bud.

But then when it comes to the guys who were caught on video from the other angle taking alleged suggestion from Tatiana's coach, those guys were banned for, in the end, nine months. Not even a full ban. One of the referees, the one who was actually officiating the bout officially, is still allowed to work at regional and local events, and he has been since then. They were both banned from NACs, which is the slang for North American Cups. Those guys are both banned for nine months from that, and it's suggested that they don't work together for a five-year period, but that's a suggestion.

And as we've seen, those suggestions tend to be ignored fairly easily. Right, right. So ironically, they'll both be back just in time for the San Jose competition next year. And so you may now be wondering, as I was, how the backstories of Mitchell and Tatiana may connect to each other.

And this is where the rabbit hole goes even deeper. Because you remember the coach that Mitchell Serin's mom first took him to see after she consulted her doctor because he was this kid who couldn't stop, you know, lightsabering people back in Jersey? Oh, like, he's been my coach since it was a Sabre club, but all the weapons were there and he wanted to just show me the rules of all of them. He showed me how to play, he showed me how to bowl.

That coach, Oleg Stetsov, is still Mitchell's personal fencing coach. And the reason I tell you that here is that Oleg Stetsov also went on to become the Sabre coach at Princeton University, meaning that Oleg was also the person who recruited and coached Tatiana Nazlyevaev, who just finished her freshman year at Princeton. But wait, there's more. Because over the years, Oleg and Tatiana's personal coach, the guy who was caught on tape in San Jose, and the

aforementioned number one saber referee in the world, Vasyl Malenchev, have all worked at the Nazlimov Fencing Foundation. I actually found listings and photos of them holding referee clinics and training sessions with campers who included, you guessed it, Mitchell and Tatiana. Two young people who, just last month, were quietly called into private hearings, I am told, that tried to make sense of this wildly tangled web. According to five sources, a set of male and female American saber fencers and their parents filed parallel complaints

against USA fencing under Section 9 of the U.S. Olympic Committee bylaws. These are Mitchell and Tatiana's own teammates in the U.S. Saber program, and they lawyered up to basically argue that allegedly manipulated matches should not have counted towards Mitchell and Tatiana's Olympic qualifying totals because these other fencers had basically gotten screwed out of living their own Olympic dreams. None of which was great, I am told, for team morale. It must be awkward as hell because the way it works in fencing is numbers one, two, and three get to compete in the individual event at

the Olympics, which is where you get the chance to win an individual medal. Number four is the alternate and does not get that opportunity. So no chance to win an individual medal, but that person does have a chance to win a team medal with the rest of the team. And in the way it is right now, Sarn is fourth, so he'll be the alternate. So I don't think there's as much bitterness over there, but definitely from like five, six, seven.

Oh yeah, the people who got edged out by it. But in Nazlimov's case, she is third in the country, which means she's taking an individual spot away from other people who in their mind deserve it more and One of those people who's currently fourth is going to fence team events with her after having sued USA fencing Yes, and Nazlimov knows that that person and others have sued her They all have to compete together to win tournaments now. This is the unseen backstage Jockeying for an Olympic spot which in in this sport, and in sports in general, is a holy thing.

H-O-L-Y, like a religious venerated position. And so the other part of this story, which is worth really being clear about, is fear. Absolutely. What are people afraid of? Why aren't more people joining you at the barricades here? I have actually had people admit to me privately and they're like, but under no circumstances are you to attach my name to this, that they have been bribed

either as athletes or that they have been bribed as officials. In both cases, they're scared for different reasons. So in the case of an athlete, that person who may be qualified for the Olympics as a fencer, who may now be a coach overseeing people who are either Olympic hopefuls or who are at the Olympics themselves, is afraid that by speaking up, these people who will not be punished for this, like it's proven that that's not going to happen. So if I make a complaint, like this guy bribed me,

they're not gonna do anything. I'm gonna see that referee at the Olympics. He's gonna be on my bout and I'm gonna lose because of that. Or if I'm a coach, the same thing's gonna happen to my fencers. And yet, at the same time, it raises the question of like, what do you need to prove something? It feels like we got the sloppiest possible evidence. It was the video that you posted in your account. Yeah. And we got the sloppiest possible

execution, which was the Malenchev statistics that Mitchell kept on benefiting from in ways that are statistically improbable. And yet that didn't matter to affecting any sort of a change when it came to those very particular cases. And so I have just, I don't say this to be grandiose, I have been scouring the planet looking for a referee who can say, Me too. This is how it works on the record.

With his face, with his voice, and the threats and the fear in mind. And the good news, Andrew, is that I found one. Oh boy. I would love to hear more about this. Stick around after the break. Okay, I will. Alright, so to truly understand why everybody is too terrified to condemn this alleged corruption that we have painstakingly laid out for you so far, you really do need to meet the most

powerful person in all of fencing, an Uzbek Russian oligarch and former saber-fencer named Alisher Ustmanov. Alisher Ustmanov happens to be the four term president of the previously mentioned International Fencing Federation and also one of the world's 100 richest people. His documented ties to Vladimir Putin, perhaps most conspicuously,

also run about as deep as his voice. world, which today have so many confrontations and divide by conflict, etc. This video, by the way, is from 2020, from when Alasfer Ustmanov personally handed a historic gift to another one of his closest friends, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, who happens to be, of course, a former fencer himself. And what Usmanov gifted President Bach was the original manuscript of the famous speech by the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, which launched the modern Olympic Games in 1892. Before that speech, the Olympic Games hadn't happened in like 1500 years, by the way. So you know, yeah, good gift.

And what President Bach did for Usmanov in return was unveil a stone of honor displayed on a wall at the Olympic Museum with the name Alisher Usmanov carved into it in large golden letters. President Bach called this a tribute to the significance and importance of this speech. This document is coming back home to the Olympic Museum and the IOC. Anyway, that in short is the type of personal influence that has scared pretty much every international fencing referee on the planet into silence. Except for this guy. Hey Mark, it's so good to see you. Hi. Where am I finding you?

Where are you at right now? In Prague, Czech Republic. Marcus Schultz grew up in Germany and he fell in love with saber fencing at age 10 thanks to his coach, a former Russian fencer. Marcus eventually chose to devote his life to refereeing, to officiating World Cups and Olympic qualifiers in saber fencing, and his dream, as a ref, was to ultimately make the Olympics.

Which is a real throughline in this story. When Alisher Usmanov first took over as president of the FIE in 2008, pumping millions of euros into Marcus' favorite sport, Marcus Schultz alleges that everything changed. There have been rumors of favor trading before Usmanov, of course, in part because of how tiny the Sabre community has always been, but now Marcus started getting offers, bribes, to personally fix matches himself. Usmanov, when he came, you know, he showed the dollar bills and then people from all over the world realized, oh, we could have a little cut from that cake, you know, and then they were pouring money into mainly like, let's say, more poorer federations, poorer

geographies. And that motivated then people of course to follow the lead and it was not enough, you know, from the very beginning started of course to completely change the system, put everywhere his people into the main positions, the referee commission, for example. So I was approached by my former coach, Russian coach, before the Olympic qualification Russian coach before the Olympic qualification in Prague, 2016 for Rio. And he approached me in the hotel because there was German championships.

And I was happy to see him again. You know, I didn't expect it at all. And he said, Marques, I have to talk to you. And I'm like, OK, what is it about? He told my wife to stay there with the kids. And he took me to his room. And I said, Marques, I've heard that you've been nominated for this Olympic qualification in Prague.

I said, yeah. Would you accept a little donation from friends if you would be generous as well? And I said, what do you mean? Yeah, 5,000 euros. I said, for what? Yeah, if you are referring in favor of a certain fencer. And I was like, couldn't believe it. I was heartbroken. You know, this man was like my father. You know, I, I, he made me a,

the fencer I was and I knew him from when I'm 10. You know, he was my coach for many years. He was like, I saw him more than my parents. He was like my father. And in this moment, like my world broke. Yeah. I saw him more than my parents. He was like my father. And in this moment, my world broke. I was like, f***. And I told him, how the f*** would you ask me that? And he said, Marcus, don't be naive. You're trying to be good boy or what? And I said, yeah. And he said, you will never make it to the top. If you behave like this, let me give you an advice. You will never make it to the top. They will never let you get to the top. So either you're going to play with

us or you're against us. And if you're against us, then you don't even continue refereeing. That was it. And more and more referees leaving the sport, referees being selected more and more from also countries where, let's say, to get to a 3,000 euros for about, you know, is five wages, six wages, monthly ones. And for these people, of course for about five wages, six wages monthly once. For these people, of course, very lucrative to be part of the system. And gradually, the sport got poisoned. And people won medals, even Olympic medals that should have not won them. So it gradually got worse, and worse and in Sabor it got catastrophic

to the extent you know that Russians were very strongly advantaged by certain refs. Okay, so this allegation of trickle-down Russian favoritism under the Usmanov regime was echoed to me by two other sources I spoke to, who themselves learned how to fence inside the former Soviet Union. What they told me is that all of this is a tragically familiar iron curtain approach to sports corruption, with its roots in the Cold War. Essentially, Russia cares so much about proving its superiority to the world that it would bankroll an entire state-sponsored Olympic doping program, for instance, and also very obviously manipulate fencing matches.

Because I am told that compared to the United States, Russia will pay its athletes and coaches multiples more in financial bonuses for winning a gold medal, for instance. We're talking about high six figures versus five. It's a system of threat. System of threat and of giving advantages and receiving advantages. And the sport is secondary. These people, they're not interested in the sport at all. They're not interested in all these children who start fencing.

They're not interested in the people that leave their heart on the punch. They're not interested in these hardworking coaches in the regional small clubs who have a job, have family, but still go every weekend with their pupils and then send them to the bigger centers. And they're so proud of their work and everything's destroyed because these people never get a chance because they're not paying

and they're part of the system. And the whole sport will collapse. And maybe it has to collapse in order to be rebuilt because what's happening now is just like it's just you know, recitares mafia mobster behavior and Everybody will confirm that to you was not part of this group everybody How many by percentage would you say referees right now? Are corrupted in saber fencing? say, referees right now are corrupted in saber fencing?

If you have, let's say you take the top 20 referees, about half. That's a lot. It's enough to work with, you don't need more. And so now you should know that Marcus recently resolved at long last to leave the sport he loves. He just doesn't want to turn into what he calls those corrupt disciples. Meanwhile, a current international referee tells me that the Usmanov cronies who oversee

officiating all need to be replaced to save the sport. Which brings us back to Andrew Fischl, who can personally name three friends, all high level saber fencers, who recently decided to make like Marcus and leave the sport this season directly because of referee corruption. And so what Andrew decided to do was study this crisis of trust. So I actually sent out three different surveys. One was just of the referees who did the most bouts at world championships to all the coaches in the competition, asking what they thought. I did another one to top fencers and the results were terrible.

I think there were 20 referees on each survey. I had the fencers rate each referee on three criteria. One, how capable they are of making good calls. Two, how fair and honest they think those referees are. And three, what their temperament is like. And so often I got comments like, this guy's a f***ing cheater. He could be good if he wanted to,

but he doesn't want to and he cheats a lot. And I got that on over half of the referees. Which is f***ing wild. Yeah, it's very unfortunate. And honestly, these conversations are really depressing. But as for how this pandemic of alleged match fixing spread all the way from an Uzbek Russian oligarch to the US Olympic team, you should know that Alisher Uzmanov has also left his post as president of the International Fencing Federation, at least.

Because this happened. There you are. That's an air raid. An air raid, siren. Several of them going off here in the center of the Ukrainian capital. In February of 2022, Russia was temporarily ousted from the International Fencing Federation over the invasion of Ukraine. And you may recall how the United States joined the European Union in punishing a roster full of Putin's favorite oligarchs. Full blocking sanctions were imposed on eight people, including billionaires as well as current and former government officials. On the list is Alisher Usmanov, whom the White House described as one of Russia's wealthiest individuals and the close ally of Putin.

Of course, not a single source I talked to thinks that Alisher Usmanov is no longer in charge of fencing. His alleged cronies are still in leadership positions throughout the FIE, still handpicking the best referees in the world, like Malenchev, and Russia was already welcomed back into the FIE last spring in time for their fencers to qualify for the Paris Olympics. And so even though Ustmanov's bankroll is still in flux,

at least for now, many expect him to run for a fifth term as Federation President. But until that happens, what Alshar Usmanov has been doing instead is proudly investing in his home country of Uzbekistan, itself a part of the former Soviet Union. And as for how Usmanov has specifically helped the Uzbek Sabre Fencing Program that is his sport and his passion, there is one decision that I need to highlight here. Because a couple years back, Uzmanov went out and handpicked a new head coach to revitalize the program.

And the man he picked was a three-time Olympic gold medalist for the former Soviet Union named Vladimir Nazlimov. Yes, that Nazlimov. The founder of the Nazlimov Fencing Foundation, a champion college coach in America, and yes, the proud grandfather of a future Princeton student named Tatiana. High level, most high motivation for any athlete is Olympic Games. But not everybody can make it. But anyway, we have to see this. As long as their core business is not affected, they don't care. That's why I'm not afraid to go on record.

Because I will receive threats after this. You can be sure about that. Yeah, I will get very ugly messages. Maybe somebody will threaten my family. These things will happen. But I'm not afraid of them because I don't think that these people have the balls anyway to do it. But if they do, okay, but somebody has to start.

And I think if I come out, other people might follow. One of my friends, the way that he put it, and again, maybe this is very naive, but I want to believe him. He said, it's almost like when you're at a wedding and it takes a big amount of courage for that first person to go out on the dance floor when no one is doing it.

And if you dance for long enough, people will join you until everyone is dancing. And he's like, I feel like you're the only one brave enough to start dancing right now. But we need other people to start dancing because I'm running out of energy. I love that metaphor. Yeah, you too.

Yeah, yeah. You sort of, you hope that courage is contagious. I really do. Okay, so you may now be wondering whatever happened to those complaints that I mentioned, the complaints that the other American fencers filed against USA Fencing last month. And after hours upon hours of marathon testimony in front of arbitrators, as well as Mitchell Serin and Tatiana Nazlimov, who got to sit there on Zoom, there was a ruling delivered alongside a very strict gag order for everybody involved.

And what I found out is that nothing changed. The verdict was that the points still counted, that Mitchell and Tatiana are still headed to the Paris Olympics, and that even though USA fencing explicitly warned Mitchell and Tatiana and the FIE about alleged manipulation There is no legal smoking gun here still Remember a referee can always hide inside the alibi the perfect alibi of saber fencing's own rule book And while USA fencing launched its own independent investigation, there is no proof to date that

Mitchell and Tatiana were complicit. As USA Fencing itself explained in a statement given to Pablo Torre Finds Out, Quote, The investigation has, to to date not found statistically significant proof implicating any USA athlete or referee in deliberate manipulation during the Olympic qualifying period. Our focus remains on supporting our athletes as they prepare for the Olympic Games Paris 2024, and we expect a full and final report from the investigators in late August or September." End quote.

So in other words, USA Fencing, like international fencing, is moving on to Paris, and they're hoping to leave this whole problem behind here in America. But as I told Andrew Fischl, moving on might not be as easy as they think. You know, Marcus, the referee that I interviewed in the middle of our show, he has a funny theory that I want to run by you.

Oh, I'd love to hear what Marcus thinks. Marcus's theory was that this global system of corruption that has existed, flowing down from an oligarch for years and years and years and years has now reached American shores. And the sloppiness of what's been happening in America, allegedly, has made potentially the most dangerous enemy in the form of parents who have been sending their kids to Ivy League schools. As people with money. And somebody stepped on their toes. And they said, okay, we're not going to take it.

We go after it. We hire private investigators. We use our connections. We have to expand to New York Times. We bring that public because we are pissed off. We're not getting for our money what we have invested for, what we should receive. And I think that was kind of the starting point of all this kind of scandal in the US.

It's not because people love the sport so much, it's because their very own economical interests have been crossed. Nice, you know, to see these people cannibalizing each other, but maybe it's good for the sport, you know, after all. But let them spend their money, I'm all in favor for it. You know, let justice, you know, prevail. prevail Right someone else has been trying to use fencing who's realizing I'm not getting the bang for my own buck

Yeah, that's it Yeah, and I think that's amazing that this happened actually I'm quite afraid I'm very happy because I never believed they know that we would kind of have this cleansing Motivation for cleansing but now that people are involved like yourselves and people that have reached have this cleansing motivation for cleansing but now that people are involved like yourselves and people that have reached now they cannot ignore it anymore because you know the consequences that will take be taken from it maybe by colleges but also like by American Federation which has already banned referees and banned international referees from referring their people how long can you ignore this as an international fancy inspiration there's too much money involved now

yeah once once this, you get in trouble. And this brings me near the end here to one more thing that I found out today, which is that Oleg Stetsov, Mitchell's personal coach since he was a young Star Wars fan in Jersey, and the guy who recruited Tatiana and coached her at Princeton is no longer at Princeton.

He left this spring, curiously, right as this whole Olympic scandal with his students was heating up. You can actually find a new job listing for Oleg's old position, Sabre Coach, on the internet and it cites, quote, good sportsmanship and ethical conduct and quote as priorities. And so later this month when I tune in to watch Mitchell and Tatiana Oleg's two Olympians fencing inside a literal French palace. I will also be reminded of something Marcus told me over text when I asked him what the competition in Paris might be like.

Everything, Marcus wrote, is engineered to cheat at the Olympics. It's why Marcus fully believes that no Olympic sport is more corrupt than the one he loved. Markus Schultz, thank you so much for being honest about this thing that you clearly also love so much. Yeah, I do and I will never stop loving it. You know, I'm just happy I'm out. And I hope it's good. But I'm really hoping it's going to come to a positive end after all. You know, hope dies last. to a positive and after all you know hope dies last. Andrew Fischl thank you for being brave enough to get behind that microphone and tell me what's actually going on in the sport you love. It has been a genuine pleasure to get all of this off

my chest and thank you honestly genuinely so much for taking an interest. so much for taking an interest. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a MetalArc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. Thanks for watching.