In the sport of fencing, why is there a cable attached to the back of each opponent?

I do not understand fencing, just curious specifically about the cable pulley system that pulls the competitor back.|||It is so that the scoring can be done electronically.





There is a cord that plugs into the fencer's weapon, that goes under their jacket and out the bottom. The cord then connects to an outer jacket (for foil and sabre, not epee) and to a plug at the end of the strip. This way, if the fencer hits their opponent on target area (the part covered by the outer jacket) a colored light will go off, and if the fencer hits off target a white light will go off.





For epee the whole body is target, so the tip of the weapon has a depression tip, if it hits the opponent at a certain amount of pressure, the light will go off.|||Just a comment to your follow up - the cable doesn't yank the fencer back. The cable is part of the "reel" that is spring loaded. The reel just keeps the cable out of the way so that the fencer doesn't trip over it.

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|||That is an electronic wire that senses when the opponent has scored.


There is not judgment by officials it is a connection between the epee and the scoring part of the body that completes a circuit.