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D'ASARO OLD: Every time you cross blades,
every time you engage in a competitive situation
you are reenacting a life death situation
you're reenacting the duel.
With somebody lived and somebody dies.
You don't really die physically but you can undergo
an ego death ego loss and the death is a loss
of self limitation things that hold you back.
The Rebirth is new knowledge, greater awareness.
SCHIFRIN: Maestro Maestro. D’asaro. My Stro.
NARRATOR: Michael D’Asaro lived a complex life
that doesn't fit nicely into a conventional
narrative but that was the point.
He didn't live his life to fit anyone's expectations.
HARKNESS: He was a very complex person.
You couldn't stick him in a pigeonhole you could try
but it wouldn’t wouldn’t work.
NARRATOR: At the core though there was one constant. Fencing.
D'ASARO YOUNG: You can learn all of life's lessons
through fencing everything you can learn through fencing
fencing is a microcosm of life.
BRADFORD: Fencing was Michael's purpose in life.
HARUTUNIAN: I cannot find anybody who's loves
fencing so much. How Mike D’Asaro.
NARRATOR: D’asaro was a world champion fencer
and then he wasn't.
He was a hugely successful college coach
and then he wasn’t.
Michael D’Asaro’s greatest opponent was always
Michael D’Asaro.
And he lost more bouts than he won. Or did he.
If you think of Michael D’Asaro as an artist then his medium
was the sport of fencing and how he expressed
that art was in a constant state of flux between
destruction and construction. Whether on himself.
Or on his students.
He would destroy his assumptions about
what fencing was in order to find new ways
to express himself.
A Jungian process of death and rebirth.
SCHIFRIN: He had his long hair.
He was in a competition in San Francisco.
And he was covered in rings of skulls.
He had Ring skulls and necklaces skulls and I walk up to him.
He didn't even say hi. He just goes.
Death before rebirth.
NARRATOR: It was a process D’Asaro would embrace
from the very beginning.
D'ASARO YOUNG: Well I'm originally
from Brooklyn New York.
NARRATOR: Stro wasn't D’Asaro’s first nickname.
As a child,
his family gave him a slightly less prestigious moniker.
D'ASARO, BARBARA: When he was born,
my mother said I'm not going to call him Michael and I'm
not going to call him Anthony.
And he was chubby as a baby so my mother said
I'm going to call him chubby.
And growing up through the years that's
what I called him chubby and when he went
to college and they would say Can I speak to Michael.
I’d put the phone down and say Hey Chubby you got a phone call.
NARRATOR: D’asaro grew up with his mom dad
and sister in the projects in the Red Hook
section of Brooklyn.
FEDERICO: Life in Red Hook during the 50s.
It was a rough neighborhood.
MACLELLAN: The projects were horrible
living environment. You know,
small places and people one on top
of the other and a lot of gangs.
GARGIULO: You know I had learned carte parry
in a very little French sort of way and it was kind
of like this delicate technical thing.
He’s like no you know this could be your life.
And I just remember him like taking my hand
and kind of slapping it across to like demonstrate that it was,
it was about blocking something.
D'ASARO, JR.: He had a cut on the inside of his left wrist.
BRADFORD: He was out and about somewhere
and a rival gang cornered him and somebody took
out a knife and tried to stab him and he parried it.
D'ASARO, JR.: And he would always tell people
that it was his first four parry.
BRADFORD: And he's got the scar to show for it.
D'ASARO OLD: But I got scars all over my body
from knife wounds.
GOLDSTEIN: You were either in a gang.
Or you were gonna get hit by the gang.
SCHIFRIN: Michael came of age as a street smart gang member.
CHING: Michael was part of a group called
the Red Hook stompers.
MACLELLAN: And his initiation was he had to cut somebody.
CHING: He was supposed to get four inches of blood
onto the blade of a knife of the rival gang.
He had found this guy that he was a rival
with the opposite gang and he got on top of the guy.
And he straddling the guy.
MACLELLAN: He said he didn't want to hurt the man.
KONECNY: He knew he couldn’t just stab him in the chest
or something and kill him.
CHING: He gets it's one of those those Stro
flashes of illumination. Flips the guy over.
MACLELLAN: And he stuck him in his gluteus.
KONECNY: Stabbed him in the butt.
CHING: Which is brilliant because yeah that's not lethal.
You're gonna get his four inches of blood.
That was just so Stro.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I was in high school and we had a ninth
period gym.
D'ASARO OLD: And I hated gym.
Gym was like the worst fucking thing you could do.
D'ASARO YOUNG: Say well if you went out for sport
then you just gotta practice. You don't have to go to gym.
D'ASARO OLD: Great. I’ll go out for sport.
It's easier to cut out a team practices than it is out
of a class.
D'ASARO YOUNG: But I was never really good enough
to make a high school team.
D'ASARO OLD: And fencing,
and they're always looking for a warm body.
D'ASARO YOUNG: So I saw all the movies and I’d
like to do that.
D'ASARO OLD: I was left handed.
Aggressive mean nasty kid.
D'ASARO, JR.: First thing came to his mind was Hey
this can help my knife fighting.
D'ASARO OLD: You know maybe I could pick up a point or two
fighting with switchblade.
MACLELLAN: He was very taken by it.
D'ASARO OLD: And I was like really good.
D'ASARO YOUNG: Probably the first time in my in my
life I have a feeling of success.
D'ASARO OLD: Up until that point said I was good.
Said I was talented.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I was like a shark tasting blood.
The more I tasted, the more I wanted.
GARGIULO: He did give me this idea that fencing
had saved his life.
SYKES: Here was something that he was doing in one area
where it was not good to do.
And then there he is on the fencing strip
and it's totally affirmed.
SCHIFRIN: Does he mean I can whack somebody upside
the head and I get credit and I can stay in high
school and I can graduate.
D'ASARO OLD: People patting me on the back,
shaking my hand give me a medals.
D'ASARO YOUNG: And I got totally hooked and totally
involved in fencing. It's been my whole life.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro attended Alexander Hamilton High School
in Brooklyn.
His high school won the championship the first
year he fenced. He placed third individually.
GLAZER: It's one of those tough kind of schools.
Not like Forest Hills. We were all gentlemen.
EISNER: The high schools that had fencing teams
would meet and compete on Saturday mornings.
GLAZER: And we went to a competition a high
school competition, and you know there was Mike.
EISNER: I had to fence Mike. He killed me.
He hit me from what seemed to me a mile away.
FEDERICO: He excelled in the sport of fencing
and actually from that got him out of that area.
There was a life after Red Hook.
NARRATOR: Before D’Asaro left Red Hook and went
off to college,
he married his high school sweetheart,
Leonora Federico.
EISNER: They were married at a high mass.
FEDERICO: The whole entire fencing team stood up
and they made I was I call it a canopy.
They put all their swords up and then they walked through.
Wow, I thought I was watching a movie.
HURST: Michael, if I understand
the story correctly,
was considered one of the top prospects,
high school prospects in the country.
D'ASARO YOUNG: But I wasn't really
interested in college. I just wanted to get out,
earn some money spend some money,
have a good time. That didn't last too long.
After about six seven months, you know it was boring.
And I wasn't enjoying myself. Applied again at the university.
I was accepted by NYU.
GLAZER: NYU had a great reputation as a, for their
fencing teams.
And it was because Hugo basically corralled all
the young good fencers from high school.
FEDERICO: Not many people left Red Hook and excelled. So,
getting into NYU was a big deal.
GLAZER: So, we had a scholarship
right through you know our entire college careers.
EISNER: We all started out as foil fencers.
GLAZER: There was no epee or saber fencing.
That only started once you got to college.
BLUM: There are three weapons in fencing. Foil,
Epee and Saber.
ORBAN: Saber is a kind of equipment that you can slash.
You can stab. And you can duel with.
BLUM: The Saber is the only weapon for which a touch
can be scored with a cut.
But you can score a hit anywhere on the body
with a cutting edge,
with the end third of the back edge,
or with the point anywhere above a line,
a theoretic line where the legs meet the body,
when you are in an en garde position.
LOSONCZY: Back and forth. Cutting slashing.
Controlled chaos. This is what Sabre is about.
GLAZER: Foil fencing is basically you hit
with the point of the foil.
And you hit anywhere on the torso.
BLUM: But not head. Not arms. Not legs.
GLAZER: It was really meant in the old days as a practice
weapon for the dueling swords, which would be Sabre and epee.
KONECNY: Includes right of way.
The attacker has right of way.
EISNER: You're obliged obligated to parry an attack
because you would do that if there was no
tip on the blade,
because you'd want to protect yourself first.
KONECNY: At the time I started fencing foil
was the only choice for women.
EISNER: Epee is a dueling sword.
The whole body is target.
LEVY: Contrary to what you see in the movies,
the idea is not to hit the other guy's blade
but it's actually to stab the other guy.
And in epee fencing,
you can hit him anywhere from head to toe.
THOMPSON: Epee is basically where each touch,
each point that scored is like a mini duel
to First Blood where whoever of the two
opponents hits the other one first,
gets the point. Or.
EISNER: You can have a simultaneous touch in epee
where you can't have a simultaneous
touch in foil or saber.
LEVY: You see somebody's fencing and whoever
stabs the other guy first, that sort of epee fencing.
GLAZER: You know,
Hugo Costello was the coach at NYU
and he would say Okay Gene you can continue
to fence foil but you Mike you're going to fence Sabre.
PEREDO: We needed a saber guy.
There was an opening. He was a good fencer.
Did he object? Not at all.
NARRATOR: The first year D’Asaro
was on the New York University fencing team,
the NYU violets won the national collegiate championship.
GLAZER: We went four straight years never losing a match.
MAKLER: And they were far and away the best.
GLAZER: And we were always in contention for either
first or second,
the National Collegiate championships,
the eastern intercollegiate championships.
We thought we'd never lose a bout.
PEREDO: We had an attitude that we would win.
GLAZER: But whenever we lost, it was viewed as an accident.
MAKLER: They were so good they didn't think
about the score,
what they did was time the bouts.
EISNER: One time there was a contest that had Gene,
Mike and Herb Cohen on who could win a bout
the fastest.
COHEN: Mike has the record for the fastest bout,
which was 12 seconds. But he got hit once.
And of course when he got off the Strip even though
he broke the record because we kept
track of twelve seconds. All right Mike. 12 seconds.
That's good. But you got hit.
He said well what do you want me to do?
I can’t parry.
NARRATOR: For over 40 years, Hungarian maestro Csaba Elthes,
was the dean of American saber fencing.
In 1958 D’Asaro met with Elthes to see if Elthes would help
with D’Asaro’s training.
COHEN: Csaba had all the saber fencers.
He was the most unique coach that had all
the competitors were all his students.
LEKACH: He was a very tough guy,
very hard very hard lessons.
LOSONCZY: If you didn't do something right,
you would get the whack on the leg.
DECHAINE: Csaba would take off his mask and say Mr. Sir.
I tell you do it this way.
He put his mask back on and go through the action again.
The third time before he took off his mask,
Csaba would whack him across the knee.
And then he'd take off his mask and said Mr.
Sir I give you three chances.
GLAZER: So Mike was a great talent without any
real discipline.
I think I was sort of the leader of that to go
to Mike and say Mike why don't you join us
and meet Csaba Elthes. He was reluctant.
We went to Csaba.
We said hey we've got this friend of ours
who's really very very good.
Csaba agreed says bring him down.
Mike agreed. He'll come. Reluctantly.
THOMPSON: He really thought he was you know he was some
kind of hot shot as a fencer.
NONOMURA, R: So we bring Mike up to sale Santelli and Csaba
is going gonna give him a lesson.
THOMPSON: He went in there thinking OK this is some,
you know, big name European coach but I'm fast. I'm strong.
I'm great.
You know I'm going to really impress this guy.
GLAZER: Csaba starts to give him this lesson
and it was terrible to watch.
THOMPSON: You know Csaba just tore him apart.
GLAZER: When Mike didn't do something right he’d sma...
You know again he’s in a T-shirt,
he’d smack him.
Csaba keeps saying you are stupid you don't
know what you're doing.
THOMPSON: It was very humbling.
I'm sure for Michael at that time.
GLAZER: Afterwards, mike is it's almost tears.
I go to Csaba and I say What do you know what do you think.
And Csaba says this is one of the great
talents I have ever seen.
And when I went to Mike and said Mike,
Csaba thinks you have this fantastic talent.
He said it’s not true. It's not true.
MASSIALAS: Csaba Elthes told me,
he said you know what,
Michael D’Asaro was the most talented fencer I ever saw.
Even though Michael was anti-establishment rebel,
he admired Csaba. I'd say he loved Csaba.
D'ASARO, JR.: Csaba taught him the game,
taught him the technique, taught him the politics,
but also taught him how to think by himself.
EISNER: The most beautiful lessons of any
student were Michael's.
People would stop and watch the lesson.
And then they'd stop
and you know people would.
GLAZER: It was like interesting
to watch over a period of time from this raw great
fencer to this really good looking classical
Hungarian saber fencer.
HURST: Michael looked like the book said
you ought to look.
ORBAN: Remember Michael Jordan?
Everybody wants to be like Mike. Well this was another Mike. Ok.
Everybody wanted to be like Mike.
NARRATOR: It didn't happen overnight.
1958 and 1959 were down years for D’Asaro as Csaba Elthes
completely rebuilt his saber skills.
But that didn't mean he couldn't be successful in other weapons.
GLAZER: Yeah,
the Pan American Games, I think he was second in epee.
MASSIALAS: Something happened he screwed up in Sabre
and he's like took an epee and beat everybody.
GLAZER: He trained in no other weapon than Sabre.
That's all he did.
And he only when we don't when it was required, so,
okay I’ll fence foil. Okay, I'll fence Epee.
MORALES: But you see his movement
and his distance and his timing and that was always great.
He could certainly hold his own in Epee.
EISNER: But he was probably the greatest three
weapon fencer from my era.
GLAZER: They knew him as a saber fencer What's
he doing being a world class epee or a foil fencer.
COHEN: He was not a classical hand touch epee guy.
He had a couple of good sneaky shots.
GLAZER: I don't know how he did all these weapons.
LEVY: So those of us that made the finals
in the 1959 nationals were put on the Pan Am team.
One of whom on the epee team was Jim Margolis
and he got hurt. Mike was practicing with us.
He was a saber fencer, one of the best in the country.
I don't know if it was me or who was but I sort
of thought he would be great to be on the epee team.
KING: When he took that epee medal.
I certainly wasn't surprised. I’d seen him fence epee.
LEVY: Roland Womack was untouchable.
He probably was two bouts ahead of everybody.
When we finished for the gold.
So Mike was in there close with everybody else.
And he got silver.
We were way ahead of everybody in that.
So everybody got to say they won a gold medal.
NARRATOR: In 1959 D’Asaro and the NYU violets lost
to the Navy midshipmen in the NCAA championship.
Navy swept the top three individual prizes as well
in foil epee and saber.
HURST: Al Morales was the young
bronze God of fencing.
The rivalry between Al Morales and Michael the collegiate
rivalry was virtually legendary.
LEVY: Mike and clearly Al Morales from Navy
were the best of the crop.
MORALES: In all my fencing with D’Asaro I was well
above 50 percent with him.
HURST: Even as a plebe,
he would get out and make me practice with him most days
because his two great rivals were Michael and a lefty
from Columbia, Stuart Reuter.
MORALES: He had handled me fairly easily the first
time we fenced, because I didn't know much about fencing.
HURST: And I remember him as technically being one
of the most enjoyable fencers to watch,
especially compared to Al Morales
who who's had his own invented style which was not
esthetically pleasing.
MORALES: I wasn’t as pretty a fencer as he was.
But I was always smarter than he was.
NARRATOR: In 1960.
NYU returned the favor to the midshipmen.
They beat Navy in the college championships
and this time NYU took all three individual top spots.
D’Asaro took first in Sabre by beating Al Morales.
Fifty nine it was Navy all three plus the national championship.
The following year they flipped around NYU
was champion and Navy was second.
LEVY: Mike I think beat Al to win the NCAA’s in their
senior year in college.
Their very long bout came from behind and finally
beat him by one. MORALES: My match up with Michael was pretty good.
I won most of them.
CHING: Fencing’s all a game of deception
and he was very good at sort of hiding those skills.
GLAZER: There were tricks that the fencers would use.
One of the tricks that Mike learned this happened
when he came back in the NCAA championships.
EISNER: Gene and I and watching Mike
fence and he's on the Strip with a guy named Parmachek.
Parmachek launches attack and is going for Mike's head
and Mike comes up to parry it.
GLAZER: And the guy does a feint and it cracked
right across right across his. You know right across his ribs.
EISNER: Two hands go up.
There are judges is not electric.
GLAZER: Mike grabs his leg.
EISNER: In agony.
GLAZER: For the judges hands a quarter
they're about to award. You know they so.
Start to come down.
EISNER: Maybe it wasn't a good touch.
GLAZER: I think it was good and the other guys
I don't think so.
The director says well throw it out.
EISNER: Mike picks up his weapon.
The director says ready fence. He goes on wait wait.
And we reveled in his getting that touch thrown out.
NARRATOR: In 1960 both Al Morales
and Michael D’Asaro were selected to go to Rome
as part of the United States fencing team for the Olympics.
HURST: In order to try to build up a fencing
structure within this country,
instead of depending as we did at that time on Hungarians,
was to have both Al and Michael fence
in the individual competition.
GLAZER: Al got knocked out pretty soon and Mike kept going.
He made a good presentation of himself.
HURST: Team on the other hand took fourth and did
it by beating the Russians.
MORALES: So it came down to really D’Asaro
and I had to win a bout.
That was not a given against the Russians.
I think they got nervous because it wasn't going
exactly the way they wanted.
But D’Asaro won a bout and I won a bout.
And we beat the Russians. Which was a major thing.
GLAZER: And that was like unheard of.
MORALES: It put us forth in the Olympics
which is unusual.
MAKLER: In 61 we were invited to the Sabre
invitation thing in Warsaw.
BLUM: This was the first time that an American team had been
asked because the team had finished fourth
in the 60 Olympics.
MAKLER: These were the best fencers from these
other countries.
BLUM: I fenced well and Mike fenced spectacularly.
MAKLER: Mike had very good results. In fact,
I think he had the best result.
BLUM: The world of fencing was a gentlemen's a world
that he was reaching toward.
D'ASARO, JR.: Told stories of you know about meeting
Nazlymov and fencing Nazlymov and beating Pawlowski in Poland.
I mean this is their home turf and no other poor kid
from the streets has done that no American
has ever done it.
BLUM: It was I think the second year
we were in Warsaw which would have been 62.
He was attracted to some pretty Polish woman.
But she didn't speak any English and he didn't speak any Polish.
But I spoke French and she spoke French.
So he he had me talk with her.
You know I think the three of us would sit there.
He kept saying to her well we we tell
her I want to take her out. No no no no no.
And he said that if I beat Pavlovsky will you go out for?
If you beat Pawlowski Sure.
COSTIN: Not too many people can say that they beat
Jerzy Pawlowsky.
BLUM: And he beat Pawlowsky.
Each touch he scored it was a close bout,
but each touch he scored, he would point to her.
The whole audience was aware of the fact that he was making
a play for her attention. So we went out together.
The three of us. I had to go along.
I was his I was his speaker.
Paul Makler said you get him back.
I want him in bed.
Here we are with six or seven Polish fencers,
me not speaking a word of Polish and some
of them speaking English and some speaking French.
I kept saying we got to go back.
We've got to get back to the hotel.
You got to go back to the hotel.
Finally he served in his said in a voice that anybody
in whatever bar we were in could hear.
He said Blum he said you train your fucking
way and I'll train mine.
And so I got up and said goodnight and then went
back the hotel.
He fenced beautifully the next day.
NARRATOR: After graduating from NYU,
D’Asaro took a job at the Donahoe and Coe
advertising firm.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I worked for about a year
in the advertising agency in New York.
I thought I was la dee da you know glamour
and lots of money and wasn't any of that at all.
NARRATOR: Fortunately or unfortunately though,
D’Asaro’s fencing brought him to the attention of the U.S.
military.
COHEN: Poujardieu, who was something
to do with the pentathlon coaches in San Antonio,
he was able to get fencers to come and join
his pentathlon training.
But of course you had to join the army.
D'ASARO, JR.: Training for the Olympics
and dying in Vietnam. Yeah, he took the right choice.
MACLELLAN: The Army asked him to come on the team
because they wanted his fencing skills.
MORALES: He wasn't made for the military.
MACLELLAN: And he didn't even think he'd have
to go to boot camp. But he had to go to boot camp.
COHEN: He’s in boot camp like everybody else.
He says wait a minute now. How far is this going to go.
MACLELLAN: Could you imagine Michael in boot camp?
COHEN: No, he wasn't too comfortable.
And if he’d try to talk to somebody like the sergeants.
The sergeants tell him get back in line and shut
your mouth.
MACLELLAN: So, he went through boot camp
and then he made the pentathlon team
and they didn't treat him very specially.
MORALES: He really wasn’t a pentathlete.
GLAZER: Mike D’Asaro on horseback.
Mike D’Asaro swimming. Mike D’Asaro shooting.
MORALES: His background was not one that you could put
into pentathlon training.
I mean you see pictures of him on a horse but he wasn't,
he wasn't a good rider.
MACLELLAN: He hated running. He enjoyed shooting.
MORALES: He couldn't shoot.
MACLELLAN: He didn't like to swim.
He loved the horses.
MORALES: You don't learn how to ride a horse cross
country 5000 meters at a full gallop and 18 of 18
or 20 obstacles overnight.
They just expected him to help with the fencing.
And that was he was invaluable for that.
ORBAN: That he actually won one of these skirmishes.
That means horseback riding shooting running and fencing.
MORALES: But a lot of times we would be fencing epee,
he and I would fence saber because we wanted to keep
the saber skills up.
KING: I was surprised Michael lasted as long as he did
in the army.
He was not great on authoritarianism.
EISNER: I think he liked that.
He certainly look good but I think he probably
was in the best shape of his life.
NARRATOR: All that extra practice paid off
for D’Asaro during his participation
in the 1962 U.S. national Fencing championship.
MCDOUGALL: The story of winning the Nationals
against Danny Magay.
As you know Danny Magay was a wonderful fencer
and our national Sabre champion many times.
MAGAY: I didn't know much about him.
But pretty quickly I found out in the final,
he turned out to be an excellent fencer.
MCDOUGALL: Michael said that the bout got to,
it was tied. It was probably nine to nine.
And I said well what did you do?
And Michael said well I went directly to the head of course.
What else did you do?
MAGAY: It was a feint of head and he finished on the chest.
GLAZER: That was sort of the crowning achievement
of his career up until that point.
OTERO: The most at sea he had ever been
in his life was the week after he won the national.
All of a sudden I had no purpose.
NARRATOR: But the gold medal at the 1962 Nationals was just
the beginning of a remarkable string of victories for D’Asaro.
KATZOFF: What Ed talked about in those days
when he was with Mike was the hotel room drinking
bouts and then fencing the next day.
SHAW: Michael can be asleep or drunk and he still can
beat anybody in the world.
MORALES: We were in Vienna for a military championship.
ORBAN: And they gathered the best talent
that was in the U.S. Army or the U.S. Navy.
NONOMURA, R: The military world championships
is a much bigger venue for fencing
than than the Olympics.
HURST: Michael established a pretty enviable
record in those.
ORBAN: Michael happened to be the top winner as far
as the individual results.
MORALES: We had a big banquet afterwards.
ORBAN: And Michael did everything to the extreme.
MORALES: Mike had a few.
ORBAN: He was sitting right across from me on this long
wooden tables.
And he's happy and singing and drinking
and singing and drinking. All of a sudden we’re looking,
I don’t see Michael anywhere. So, I look down.
He's underneath.
He he slipped underneath the big table.
We got a hold of Michael and we pulled him up. And.
We kind of walked him outside and we were waiting
for the little buses. Started to puke.
OK so he puked on Al Davis foot.
And I just kind of kept him away too. You know.
MORALES: We had take him put him in the shower.
ORBAN: And he's objecting and he’s pleading
begging not to kill him.
And then we grab him and we put him on the bunk.
So next morning comes and wake him up and we have a tournament.
SHAW: They grab Michael out of bed and they go Michael,
Michael. and he's like yeah, yeah. What’s going on.
And they’re like Michael.
It's time for your individual event.
ORBAN: We dress him. OK. And he's fencing foil.
RUSSELL: Gets on the strip and he's having issues
with hitting his opponent and his coach yelled out
hit the one in the middle.
Soon as he made that connection and he hit the person
in the middle then it was over.
ORBAN: He beats, he destroys this guy.
And he destroys the guy after him and after him and after him.
OTERO: He could barely walk but once he got on that strip.
Boom and he blew him out.
ORBAN: Michael win dual championship.
Won individual and in the team championship.
United States with there level of the fencing and going winning
in the one this toughest competition
in the world Amazing.
Amazing thing only can do that Mike.
MAKLER: And then in 63,
I was captain of the Pan Am team in Sao Paolo
and Mike won the saber there. We won all the events.
NARRATOR: The culmination of this remarkable string
of accomplishments was a decisive bout
against D’Asaro’s idol Jerzy Pawlowski at
the World Championships in Gdansk Poland.
MASSIALAS: In those days they had side judges
behind each fencer. A referee.
So basically an American fencing like the national hero
of Poland during the Soviet communist days, this was not,
you know, going to go well.
OTERO: Pawlowsky was his big, I'd say, his hero.
Probably the best saber fencer I'd ever seen.
MASSIALAS: Somehow miraculously the score
is 9 9. Michael was like, you know,
going off and doing whatever. Then he scores his last touch.
So like this hush in the crowd. And everybody is like ‘Oh”.
And then they make the call against Michael.
And then of course everyone's cheering for Pawlowsky,
because it's a Pawlowsky thing. Pawlowsky comes over he says,
so oh sorry Michael.
And Michael goes and grabs him and gives
him a kiss on the cheeks.
And the crowd went absolutely nuts.
They were yelling, before they were like Pawlowsky.
Pawlowsky. And all of a sudden when this happened,
the crowd turned around and they were yelling D’Asaro.
D’Asaro.
ORBAN: Here’s a guy that being rooted
for by the enemy.
MASSIALAS: And then the next day.
PLATT: The fencing magazine in Poland with Michael
in a full lunge caption was that the American fencing
team is so bad that Jesus Christ himself
is now fencing for them.
D'ASARO, JR.: These guys were were born and bred
to win Olympic gold medals and be the top in the sport.
And this guy from Brooklyn comes out
and just beats the crap out of them
when they're not expecting it.
NARRATOR: So what can be said about D’Asaro as a fencer.
FEDERICO: He wasn't a bragger.
He didn't say I did this and I did that and I'm
going here and I'm going there.
KING: It was about the experience.
FEDERICO: I think he let his fencing skills talk for him.
OTERO: He would talk about other people's bouts as much
as he’d talked about his own.
HAYES: When he decided to make that hit,
there was there there was nothing stopping it.
There might be some correlation between being a
capable international level fencer and being
willing to destroy people.
PLATT: Michael did have an edgy side.
As do most successful competitors.
This is a combative sport and there's a there's
a fierceness that's needed and Michaels was not
far from the surface.
KING: You didn't see any games or anything,
any referee baiting or any of those things.
He just fenced.
KOLOMBATOVICH: Ok, they smoked some marijuana
but when they got on that strip and they were training,
they were focused on one thing and that was fencing.
DOW: The fact that he could fence
with that stuff in him was doubly impressive
because these were not performance enhancing drugs.
LEVY: When he took off his mask to shake
your hands afterwards,
he had the biggest grin on his face.
Even if he lost.
Of course he could fence every weapon
and he was he was modest about it but he was a great
guy to have on a team.
MORALES: You knew that he was going to fence
hard which is all we ask for.
So I would classify him as a good teammate.
But not a I wouldn't say great teammate.
LEVY: He was supportive everybody on the team
and we all liked watching him fence
because he could beat anybody.
MORALES: He wasn’t a showboat but he was showy. Absolutely.
That's part of his style.
NARRATOR: Which brings us to the 1964 Olympic team
and D’Asaro’s selection for that team.
He won the 1962 nationals.
He won the 1963 Pan Am Games and he won the 1963
military World Championships.
D'Asaro was the only American fencer to make it out
of the pools and into direct elimination at
the World Championships in Gdansk Poland where
he was narrowly defeated by Jerzy Pawlowsky.
He had better international results than any
other American saber fencer.
If they used the same selection criteria they used
for the Rome Olympics,
it would appear D’Asaro was a lock to make
the team going to Tokyo. But it was not to be.
Rule changes made the selection process more merit based.
Your position on the team would now be derived from a new
point system based on your results
from national tournaments. In 1963,
D’Asaro had a down year in the national tournaments.
Despite the changes,
D’Asaro still had enough points to be third
on the national team competing in the Tokyo Olympics.
Officials were so confident of D’Asaro’s
participation in the Olympics,
D’Asaro was sent to Tokyo for an Olympic test event.
Unfortunately there was one more complication.
The Hungarian fencers who had arrived
in the United States after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
were now going to be allowed fence for the U.S. team.
The Hungarian fencers were given points to indicate
how they potentially would have done
if they were allowed fence in the national
qualifying events.
Once the new numbers were added D’Asaro
slipped from third place on the team to second alternate.
Michael would not be going to the Olympics
in Tokyo in 1964.
By 1965 it appears that D’Asaro had left fencing behind him
and embraced a life far removed from competitive fencing.
D'ASARO, JR.: He'd become a hippie.
GOLDSTEIN: And he had long hair like Cyrano de Bergerac.
NARRATOR: There are no mentions of D’Asaro
participating in any fencing tournaments in 1965.
His personal life was also in a state of upheaval.
He left his wife,
Leonora and his six month old son, Michael Junior.
In 1966 D’Asaro returned to fencing.
He became a member of the New York Athletic Club
team that included Alex Orban and Al Morales.
That year D’Asaro took third at Nationals
and New York Athletic Club team took first in the Sabre
team event.
D’Asaro fenced internationally at
Lake Balaton in Hungary.
His USA team came in fifth at the Warsaw World Cup.
By the time of the national championships in 1967,
D’Asaro was ranked third in the country in Sabre.
A good showing at the Nationals would assure
him a place on the U.S.
team for the Pan Am Games and eventually the Olympics.
TARASCIO: I recall going to my first national
championships in 1967. It was in Santa Monica.
We all heard about this Michael D’Asaro.
HURST: And there was this a full out
hippie sitting on the ledge.
I walked by a little Daisy in the
beard and the whole thing. Holy God.
From somewhere in there came out Hey, Buzz.
How you doing. One of these things.
It was Michael.
TARASCIO: Because this person Michael D’Asaro was going
to be fencing,
a bunch of us kids went to watch the finals.
KOLOMBATOVICH: They announced him.
He comes on the strip with this rose in his teeth
and he threw it out.
TARASCIO: And he was the hero of every fencer
that was probably under 25 years old.
NARRATOR: In a repeat of D’Asaro’s 1966 U.S.
nationals performance,
D’Asaro came in third individually
and his New York Athletic Club team took first.
D’Asaro had earned the points to be on the national team,
yet he was still kept off the team going to Mexico.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I was the Pan-American champion.
Fenced in that competition. I was third.
And they take the top five.
But they wouldn't take me on a team
because my hair was too long.
DECHAINE: The powers that we're putting together
the preparations for the Pan American Games
in Winnipeg Canada 1967,
came up to him and said Well Mike you're at
the top of the list for being on the US team again.
BURCHARD: He was challenged by the American Olympic
icon Avery Brundage,
who ran everything for the Olympic Committee,
to either cut his hair or not be on the Olympic team.
D'ASARO, JR.: If you look at those guys,
those guys who get off the bus in the suit and tie
and you know the straight hair, I mean,
he's the only one who's out there.
They were calling out who'd made the Pan Am team
and they didn't call his name.
KOLOMBATOVICH: He didn't cut his hair.
TARASCIO: Once he did that I just had so much
respect for him.
CARTER: I mean he had principles
and he stood for something and sometimes
those are controversial.
KING: Think he was pretty bitter about it.
MARTINEZ: And he had great hair.
I wouldn’t have had them cut my hair either.
KOLOMBATOVICH: He was not allowed to compete
on that Pan Am Games.
And the next year's Olympic Games.
DECHAINE: I was so proud of him.
NONOMURA, R: I think I respected him more for having
stood his ground.
TARASCIO: There is some the good old boy network
that took place and Michael was not part of that.
KOLOMBATOVICH: We got to keep the guys with long
hair out of it.
We got to keep the poor people out of it.
MCDOUGALL: Frankly, they make up any reason to get
one guy off the team so they could put their
guy on you know so this happened to be long hair.
NONOMURA, G: You do what you think is right.
And you you have to have principles.
And he showed that when he wouldn't cut
his hair just to make a team.
NONOMURA, R: You know, that’s Michael.
It was his was his style.
MACLELLAN: Michael the rebel, the gunslinger,
the anti-establishment, he liked to drop out.
He threw everything away because he had athletically
qualified to make the Olympic team and just disappeared
from everyone's lives.
OTERO: He walked away from the sport the way he walked
away from the rest of his life.
D'ASARO, BARBARA: He felt he was a failure at
what he was doing.
And I don't know he just got mad threw everything away.
Took all his trophies and threw them away.
ORBAN: Our team kind of broke up after that.
MAKLER: In leaving New York,
he really was leaving his career.
ORBAN: Had he stayed with, with Elthes,
he would have excelled as far as I'm concerned
because they know he was right up there.
HURST: Given the seasoning that both he and Al
had that they that might have given
us some interesting results in, in 68.
KING: If he had been a competitor for many
more years, I think he would have changed the way that a lot
of young competitors would look at fencing
and he might have shortened the journey from being
an also ran country that never saw good fencing up until,
you know, where we started doing well.
ORBAN: I think he could have won a World Championship.
You know.
He could have won an Olympic champion.
He could have won anything.
OTERO: People came to San Francisco to change
their life.
They left their old life behind them.
Michael left a whole complicated real
life behind him.
BRADFORD: Moved to San Francisco where
he took acid everyday for a year and ate
brown rice and meditated.
D'ASARO YOUNG: Did the whole Haight Ashbury hippie scene.
It was great. It was fabulous.
NARRATOR: While D'Asaro expanded his consciousness,
he supported himself by selling newspapers
in the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco.
A few blocks away on Fillmore Street,
the Halberstadt fencing club had lost its maestro
and was in search of a new head coach.
MACLELLAN: We went to San Francisco to meet
Hans Halberstadt and when we got to Halberstadt fencing club,
there was a sign on the window saying the club
was closed because Hans was sick.
And he never recovered. And he died shortly after.
MEBINE: Chuck Selberg had left and so we didn't
have a coach.
LEKACH: I think they were even
considering shutting it down.
GOLDSTEIN: Michael and I were selling Berkeley Barb
and Oracle's out of my Cadillac and some guy comes
up to him and says Michael D’Asaro
what are you doing here.
TARASCIO: Jack Baker saw him selling Berkeley Barb
and says oh no. This is you can't do this.
MCDOUGALL: Jack Baker, the chairman of AFLA,
came in to the fencing shop one day
when I was working and said Mike D’Asaro
is in San Francisco.
Jack tell him to come and see me.
I'd love to meet him. You know.
BURCHARD: Michael went OK.
NARRATOR: D’asaro and John McDougal met at
the Halberstadt fencers club for what would be
the start of the next chapter in D’Asaro’s fencing journey.
MCDOUGALL: Then Michael walked around
looked at the Salle, looked at the Salle.
Then he said this place has good vibes. I said Yeah.
What’s vibes?
And he said vibrations vibrations.
BURCHARD: He had no idea or any desire to do such things.
Cause he thought he had left fencing behind.
I never in my life thought of coaching fencing.
The thought had never entered my mind.
But at that time, yeah I needed a job.
MCDOUGALL: Michael then looked around a little
more and he said look it, he says,
you get me a job teaching fencing and I'll
give you hippie lessons.
GOLDSTEIN: And there was an apartment there.
And all kinds of the guys stuff and all the fencing equipment.
And he says Yeah I'll be the maestro.
OTERO: I was living next door to Halberstadt.
I got back from school one day I looked out
the window and I saw two crazed hippies
painting a Cadillac.
Oh that's the hippie guy who's now the fencing
coach at Halberstadt.
He's a better hippie coach than a fencing coach.
LEKACH: The Mike didn't go to and the kind of coaching
classes or anything. He just started doing it.
BRADFORD: He figured it out and his role model of course
was Csaba Elthes.
MCDOUGALL: He was a natural teacher.
No problem there.
Very difficult to teach yourself something and then
be so highly successful.
MEBINE: It didn't take very long at all and the place
was we didn't have room for anymore.
OTERO: Okay. At San Francisco in 67 of course you have
a hippie fencing master.
MARTINEZ: He was a hippie but he was a Brooklyn hippie.
NARRATOR: D’asaro’s reputation quickly drew
fencers from all over the Bay Area.
They came to see what he had learned as a top
ranked fencer and if he could teach
those skills to them.
BAILEY: At that time he was probably the most
accomplished fencer,
certainly on the West Coast and I think
that was a significant draw.
KING: Friend of mine a woman named Emily Johnson
said Guess Guess who's coaching at Halberstadt now.
And I said who.
And she told me Mike was there and I thought
that was really wonderful. And I said Good.
I'm hurrying back.
LEKACH: But I said What the hell. I’m going.
Let's see if I can get lessons from D’Asaro.
MACLELLAN: He saw me fence and he asked my parents
if they'd be willing to take me to take lessons
from him in San Francisco.
LOSONCZY: Cause I had heard that there
was a energetic cool dynamic coach by the name
of Mike D’Asaro.
NONOMURA, G: There’s this guy I’m looking at him
like is that D’Artagnan.
KING: He believed in discipline and he taught
a very simple straightforward game.
BURCHARD: Exactitude and high
standards and stuff I think came from Csaba Elthes
because his reputation was one of tolerating
nothing but perfection.
LEKACH: Mike was very hard on the students.
The better students.
KING: The old coaching was if you execute
it the way I tell you, you will score.
Michaels was this is how you do it,
now go out and use your head and score.
D'ASARO, JR.: He was able to take what his fencing style
which was so very creative in thinking wise and what's
going to come next or what's what do you feel
is going to come next.
As to what should logically come next.
And translate that into a lesson.
To me that was his strongest point.
KING: He taught you do this. You do that.
And Michael said hit him.
He instilled in you that that love
that he had for the sport.
LEKACH: During the lesson he would really cut you.
So you'd really had to parry for example,
otherwise you get nice bruises.
MACLELLAN: He had me doing so many lunges and advance
and retreating, I almost would get on the floor puking and he'd say get up.
Come on. Let's keep going.
BURCHARD: He’d be with his casually
with his legs crossed,
talking to a colleague across the room and he'd
look over and he'd watch practice and then he’d yell out,
you call that a lunge.
NARRATOR: Despite his lack of formal training as a coach,
D’Asaro’s teaching did pay off for his students.
KING: He basically cleaned up my game and I won two
more National’s with him.
OTERO: I won all three weapons and under 19
West Coast championships.
NONOMURA, G: I won more under him than anybody else ever.
LEKACH: Somehow I managed to make the saber team,
you know,
beating out several other potential candidates.
Surprise. Surprise.
But then I would mention that D’Asaro was my
coach and then of course.
NARRATOR: As usual,
D’Asaro ran the club according to his own rules.
OTERO: There was a two tier population at Halberstadt.
MCDOUGALL: People who were very straight
and didn't smoke and they stayed in the salle all the time.
And the people that did smoke which was about half the people,
would go out back and smoke all they wanted out there
and nobody bothered anybody else.
OTERO: Smoked a lot of dope at Halberstadt.
MASSIALAS: At Halberstadt, you know,
you trained took a lesson. You went out.
OTERO: Talking to Michael, in the back room,
late night stories.
You know Michael the first time I saw
you I was looking out the window and I saw
you with your buddy Jerry painting that Cadillac.
What the hell was that about. We were on acid.
NARRATOR: As the years progressed at
Halberstadt D’Asaro started to think
of coaching less as a part time endeavor
and more as an avocation.
EISNER: I sort of marveled at his ability to do that job.
OTERO: It was really kind of in the course
of when I met him that he transitioned from being
an accidental coach to saying,
oh maybe there's something in this.
Maybe this is my life.
EISNER: When you're coaching a team,
it has to be disciplined and schedules and all
kinds of stuff which didn't fit with my picture of Mike.
NARRATOR: In 1970,
D’Asaro accepted an invitation to be
on the World Masters team that was going to take
part in an international competition in London.
It was a chance for D’Asaro to compete once again
on the international stage and maybe show
the AFLA what a mistake they made when they didn't
select him for the 1967 Pan Am team.
OTERO: Raul Sudré, who was my coach at Cornell,
he came up with the idea of putting together a team
of American fencing masters to create an American team
for the world master championship.
BURCHARD: And it was a great team.
OTERO: Sudré picked Michael for the reason any
fencing coach picks anyone for their team because they're
looking for the best.
NONOMURA, G: The same people who are at the world's
masters are the same people who were at
the World Championship. For him to win that is the same thing
is winning the World Championship.
OTERO: He very much remained Michael the hippie,
which for some of the other people on the team
was difficult.
You know the Geraci’s of the world.
Because if you look at pictures from that,
the hair is absolutely long. There he is in sandals.
TARASCIO: He took that competition very seriously.
He really really got into the training.
You would think that he was really a world
class fencer still.
NONOMURA, G: And he went to the Masters and he won.
BURCHARD: That was an amazing eye opener to watch
everybody fencing. Watch them win so many bouts.
TARASCIO: And I think he wanted to like make
a statement to the AFLA, that he was not gone.
NARRATOR: Being on the World Masters team
had the added benefit of putting D’Asaro in contact with some
of the top coaches in the country.
He was invited to help at seminars at Cornell University.
He was selected to coach on the junior
world teams in 1973 and 1974.
MASSIALAS: Really met him at the junior world
championships in 1974 in Istanbul Turkey.
LOSONCZY: And always gave me the confidence that I can
make an impact in this tournament,
even though there were no junior fencers
from the United States ever made the final.
So real fast forward, that day, it was a two day tournament,
I made the final and came in fourth.
One of the things that Michael always sort of encouraged
the athletes to do is that you know when you go
to fencing tournaments, it's not about just fencing.
It's about the entire experience.
Yes, you want to be successful what you do
in fencing but it's really about the overall
life experience.
And that’s something that he really reinforced.
LOSONCZY: So, he was very instrumental in us,
the US saber team,
getting a silver medal in the Pan American Games
in Mexico City.
MACLELLAN: I think he was extremely
excited and honored, because Olympic coach.
Good title.
OTERO: In 1972 I graduated from high school,
went off to college, went to Cornell.
Cornell being in the Ivy League fenced other Ivy League schools.
And one of those was Penn.
Penn had a shall we say a much more colorful
team than most of the era.
Csizar recruited heavily out of the black
community in Philadelphia,
was colorblind and just wanted great athletes.
The Penn team was pretty cool.
Csizar was a traditional fencing master i.e. a maestro.
Csizar had always been maestro but given
the sort of cultural change that was taking place there,
the guys fencing for him shortened maestro to Stro.
I couldn't help but notice that they simply reflexively
referred to Csizar as Stro. I came back from my first break,
Christmas break,
reporting to Michael and he was saying
what was it like. I said it was great. Wonderful.
Love college fencing and an interesting thing
there is a phenomenon at the University of Pennsylvania
where they call Csziar Stro.
Everybody laughed and we sort of picked up on it ourselves.
And called would call Michael Stro.
It was almost facetiously.
Michael Tarscio took that and ran with it.
He called Stro Stro repeatedly from the get go.
He kind of insisted on it. Meanwhile,
I went off back to back to college.
But when I came back that summer Michael D’Asaro was the Stro.
I think Tarascio really stuck it to him.
Stuck it on him. Michael loved it. It was cool.
And it reflected his place in American fencing.
He wasn't a maestro in the traditional sense.
He was the new version of a fencing coach.
And that was a Stro.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro became a popular choice for top level
coaching jobs around the country.
Hugo Costello at NYU and Csaba Elthes both offered
him coaching jobs in New York.
D'Asaro chose to remain in the Bay Area and took a job
at San Jose State University coaching the women's
fencing team.
BRADFORD: They hired Michael D’Asaro to build
the woman's fencing team because they had to meet
the title nine criteria.
NONOMURA, G: He was the wild coach from the west coast,
as opposed to one of these staid conservative
coaches from the east. Selecting him,
it was on his merits. Purely.
MASSIALAS: Back then the bay area was like nothing
in fencing. GARGIULO: We were outcasts over here on the west coast.
There wasn't a really strong West Coast program.
YU: You can only get strong and fencing in California,
if you work with Michael D’Asaro.
NARRATOR: For the new job at San Jose State,
D’Asaro opted to make some lifestyle changes.
One of which would have been unthinkable just
a few years prior.
NONOMURA, G: One day I walked into the fencing club and he'd
cut off all his hair.
MASSIALAS: The hair was cut. He had the straight laced.
Very different Michael than was the pre San Jose days.
NARRATOR: D’asaro was able to quickly attract top
level talent to the San Jose State
fencing program.
YU: Michael D’Asaro,
because of his charisma and incredible skills, you know,
drew people to San Jose State.
MACLELLAN: He did the ultimate recruit for me.
Marriage. And then got Vinny Stacy.
We had met Michael I think at the national championships.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I met two ladies on a junior team
that I coached back then who were really
impressed with my coaching and they were ready to go
to college and they came here.
JOHNSON: My name is Stacy Johnson.
I'm originally from Texas. Vince and I both are.
We just moved to California especially to train
with Michael.
BRADFORD: And we were both like Oh my God he's just
so fantastic.
KONECNY: I wanted to be with the best women fencers.
BRADFORD: And we got ourselves out
to California and started to study under him
and we started to get incredible results.
MASSIALAS: He had the most dynamic women's program by far.
HARUTUNIAN: They’re dominate the NCAA.
SCHIFRIN: They were legendary.
D'ASARO, JR.: Didn’t have results in Halberstadt.
Didn't have a whole lot of results here in L.A.
San Jose? Man, he crushed it.
SCHIFRIN: Maybe he was a former hippie.
Maybe he was a party guy.
But the reputation was also he had an amazing
group of fencing athletes.
There was a Jekyll and Hyde quality to D’Asaro's reputation.
SCHIFRIN: We were told stay away from Michael D’Asaro.
YU: He is brutal.
SCHIFRIN: Kind of the scum of the fencing world.
YU: He learned everything from this Hungarian
maestro named Csaba, who would hit people.
SCHIFRIN: As I grew older as a young teen
I was like titillated by that idea.
MACLELLAN: He did draw the rebels.
I mean look at Greg and Peter and Vinnie and Stacy.
And because that's the kind of people
that could understand him.
NARRATOR: While D’Asaro did manage to build
the top rank women's fencing program in the nation,
when it came time to build the men's program,
recruitment proved far more difficult.
MACLELLAN: He couldn't get any saber guys because they all
wanted to be on the these coast.
NONOMURA, G: Most of the saber
fencers he had there, he created.
MARTINEZ: He plucked me out of the projects in New York
and I came to San Jose State and my life is forever changed.
I don't think I would've survived back there.
MASSIALAS: But everybody that I saw that he worked
with for any sort of period of time,
improved tremendously.
SCHIFRIN: I knew Michael was a saber fencer.
I didn't know what he knew about epee.
And I was an epee national champion.
Junior champion. Under 20.
You know so he said well let's fence.
And he proceeded to beat me thoroughly and handily.
HURST: By that time Michael had taken over
and turned first into a West Coast
power and then national.
SCHIFRIN: I wanted to be an Olympian. So,
I felt like it might be smart for me to study there.
HARUTUNIAN: Mike settled. He’s have wife. Family.
He’s have house. He’s have garden.
NARRATOR: In his new role as head coach at San Jose State,
D’Asaro kept some things the same
in his coaching style but did a complete turnaround in others.
BURCHARD: So he ran practices with a stopwatch
and a clipboard.
Totally opposite than he had been
in San Francisco.
NONOMURA, G: He realized he had to get all these people
moving and when you're talking about college students
some of them may be kind of interested but not
showing it at all.
So he really had to work hard to keep them going.
MACLELLAN: Michael's teaching at Halberstadt and at
San Jose State was the same.
What was different was that he was responsible
for so much more.
LEKACH: From a hippie to a law abiding citizen.
He'd have a whistle and bark orders and this kind of thing
like a basketball coach.
D'ASARO, JR.: At San Jose State,
he was a very rough coach. Lots of yelling.
Lots of screaming. Lots of cursing.
SCHIFRIN: He would berate you.
It was physically difficult. He would hit you.
HARKNESS: It taught me how how I don't want to coach.
GARGIULO: He had this amazing ability to be sensitive
as well and this was the contradiction
of Stro.
D'ASARO, JR.: Just as strong and mean and loud
as he was when you were fucking it up,
that's just as great as he was when you were doing
it well.
NARRATOR: It's possible that D’Asaro remembered
his days in the Army as a pentathlete
and the benefits of physical training
when he made conditioning a priority
for the fencers at San Jose State.
GARGIULO: Stro physically was always pushing himself
and his students in ways that fencing at the time
wasn't doing. So, for the first month,
you didn't touch a weapon.
KONECNY: We didn't do a lot of free fencing.
D'ASARO YOUNG: Idealistically speaking,
people should be doing this for six months to a year
before they even touch a weapon.
KNIES: We were all super fit.
HARKNESS: We are going to make athletes.
MARTINEZ: And the first thing he says is two miles.
HARKNESS: You're running to the south campus,
to the stadium. You're going to do sprints.
You're gonna do stairs. You know you suffer together.
And you also find out how far you can push yourself.
MACLELLAN: Lessons drilling footwork fencing.
We get do all that in a day.
HARKNESS: Between the athleticism and lessons
with Stro,
you couldn't be killed with ordinary weapons.
GARGIULO: He was there working his team
you know harder himself than they were willing to work.
I mean he was infusing them with passion.
BRADFORD: I'm a coach myself,
I don't know where he got all of that energy.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro placed an extraordinary emphasis
on footwork in his training.
SCHIFRIN: Michael was a taskmaster in those
footwork sessions.
BAILEY: He would have the class do like 100 lunges
before they ever started the lesson or did anything else.
CHING: So many freakin' lunges.
MARTINEZ: Ah, the footwork. The footwork. The footwork.
GARGIULO: I also had these pictures of Stro
with his long hair doing footwork with the waves.
SCHIFRIN: And we definitely went over to Santa Cruz
and did footwork,
just like our coach Michael D’Asaro used to do.
BAILEY: D’asaro I think it was able to get some
of these kids at a relatively young age where you can
instill in them the proper fencing technique and the proper
conditioning that was required.
SCHIFRIN: Well I don't know if he is good with beginners.
But I think he inspired beginners.
NARRATOR: D’asaro believed in individualized lessons.
Everyone was trained according to their
own abilities.
JOHNSON: Michael's lessons were not formulaic.
OTERO: Michael would make it up each time for each person.
D'ASARO, JR.: He would teach his students how to think
for themselves.
And come up with their own style that fits them.
MACLELLAN: Because he really was able to adapt,
like any good coach, adapt to any student's ability.
D'ASARO, JR.: Greg didn't fence like anybody else.
He was twitchy. He was twitchy.
Greg was the only one I knew flicked.
Schifrin was kind of the same way.
You know he’s sort of stay out. Where's the distance.
Maybe I’m up here. Maybe not. Maybe I’m down here.
Where all the other epee fencers were like
like you know regimented.
4 6 4 6 up 7 8. It's his students that do that.
And that's incredible. I mean Joy was the same way.
Gay was the same way. You know, actually Gay wasn’t.
Gay was a perfect classic fencer.
So he could do anything.
SCHIFRIN: Every time you step on the Strip,
you give your best performance. Every time.
Whether it's practice. Whether it's a bout.
You're always give your best performance.
BRADFORD: And he could be very intense,
like just so focused on you.
And he could just draw out of you a really
high level of performance.
NARRATOR: D’asaro challenged his students constantly.
You could argue his methods bordered on a form
of cruel and unusual punishment.
KNIES: He came from the mean Daddy school of giving lessons.
SCHIFRIN: Michael's idea about the lesson was it would be
so difficult and so grueling.
BAILEY: Any lesson you take any fencing you do.
MACLELLAN: Should be so much harder than the competition.
So when you get to the competition it's easy.
HARKNESS: He said that's why he was such a you know
abusive bastard on the Strip.
Because after lessons with him what can they possibly
do to you?
PLATT: Fencing you is nothing like being yelled at by Michael.
GARGIULO: Mike knocked the weapon out of my hand,
took a shoe,
picked it up with his weapon and flew it at
me and said I’m done tonight.
BRADFORD: And he could be in a bad mood and ask
you to make a parry four and you think you're gonna
make a perfect tiny parry four and he would like whack
you on the head and go too big.
MARTINEZ: He whacked the shit out of me.
HARKNESS: The guys who were consistently
bleeding at the end of the lesson
were the Sabre guys.
And they weren't like oh they were like they're
pumped up by it.
BRADFORD: When he was a young man,
a coach abusing an athlete was acceptable.
We didn't call it abuse.
We said the coach was trying to motivate the student.
KNIES: He would hit me once, I wouldn't let him hit me again.
So, I'd keep the distance or I'd make that that parry.
BRADFORD: So, Michael was abused by his coach
and he brought that to coaching.
NARRATOR: But how much was too much?
Did he cross the line into abuse?
TARASCIO: It was just Michael myself.
And he broke me.
HARKNESS: The theory was that you had to break
somebody down completely and then rebuild him.
DECHAINE: Michael always tried to feel out his pupil.
See what his pupil was capable of so that he wouldn't
push it beyond what the student was capable of.
HARKNESS: Just another lesson with Stro,
where nothing you did was right. Everything you did was wrong.
And not only was everything wrong but everything
was wrong and you were a bad person for doing
everything wrong. And everything was wrong,
you were a bad person for doing everything wrong
and you'll never do anything right.
He's not taking it easy on me and I actually dropped.
HARKNESS: No no.
Wrong wrong wrong and you're stupid and you're wrong.
That's not a fucking parry. This is a fucking parry.
This is a riposte? You call that a fucking riposte?
TARASCIO: And I thought the lesson was over.
He said get up.
HARKNESS: And I'm just so fed up.
I can't do anything right.
And so I'm hitting him as hard as I can.
Tears are starting to stream down my face I'm
so fucking pissed.
TARASCIO: And the lesson continued until I dropped
maybe three four or five times.
HARKNESS: And I’m hitting him as hard as I can.
Hitting him as hard as I can. Hit him as hard as I can.
TARASCIO: One of the few times that I wished
I'd never been a fencer.
HARKNESS: Why you hitting me so hard?
Because I want to kill you.
TARASCIO: He broke me to 98 percent.
HARKNESS: Oh. OK. Nice and easy now.
Nice and easy. That was pretty good. OK. Nice.
OK. Now lunge. Right. Good. OK. Good lesson.
TARASCIO: He never did that after that.
But one time just to show that when you're fencing,
you don't give up.
SCHIFRIN: It would never occur to me to quit.
He was mean and miserable and horrible to me, too.
But I just thought well that's Michael like.
HURST: When you become a varsity coach,
by definition you have to strive to produce a winning team.
Whether the kids are happy or not isn't what is going
to necessarily impress the athletic director and get
another year’s contract.
NARRATOR: Some of D’Asaro’s teaching examples owed
more to the streets of Red Hook than traditional
old school fencing lessons.
CHING: He would use analogies that were often very street.
HARKNESS: The seconde parry one was a classic
because this was pure Stro.
CARTER: I remember someone asking like how do
you take parry seconde.
HARKNESS: You don’t know what seconde is?
CHING: It's like you got a beer bottle.
HARKNESS: And you break it on the bar before
you cut the motherfucker.
CARTER: That motion,
when you crack the bottle is parry seconde.
HINTON: Oh it kind of just clicked.
We know exactly what you mean.
HARKNESS: Seconde. We know how to parry
seconde now.
NARRATOR: The formidable passion D’Asaro brought
to coaching in the gym didn't translate very
well to competitions.
MASSIALAS: There's different elements about strip
coaching tactics emotions all that kind of stuff.
And I think he would have been very good about that.
BRADFORD: He was not a great strip side coach.
CHING: He was almost regularly kicked out of the gym.
BRADFORD: He was great in the salle.
He was terrible at fencing tournaments in fact
we banned him.
CHING: He would be yelling at us.
BRADFORD: And he could get too emotional and get
us too upset. So we kept him away.
NARRATOR: The one thing no one could question
was the fact D’Asaro pushed himself to be better
as a coach just as hard as he pushed his athletes
to be better fencers.
HARUTUNIAN: I cannot express how much this guy all
the time looking to everybody who is doing anything.
Can he learn something and improve his fencing.
HARKNESS: A lot of other coaches seem to think
I know it all.
Michael never said he knew at all.
And every year he would have new information.
He always sought out information and would come
in and inflict it on us. I.E. hundred lunges with a brick.
D'ASARO YOUNG: I never considered myself
a coach because I never thought I knew enough myself.
I was learning always learning.
HARUTUNIAN: Mike sponge.
He’s one take what he's thinking right
for fencing and putting in his so he's can give
something more to his students.
THOMPSON: He was the first person I definitely worked
with who who brought in some different drills that were all
about the mentality of fencing.
JOHNSON: We did sports psychology work.
And that was really kind of the nascence of that.
SCHIFRIN: I think great teachers create
the space for students to flourish in their own way.
CHING: Michael would say he's only has us for a couple
hours a week.
You know if you can do more do more.
HAYES: Michael didn't impress me as a deep thinker.
He was curious and he would pursue a theme.
But but I didn't think he was a deep thinker
in the sense of a scholarly mind.
HARKNESS: If you just talked to him briefly
you'd be like what, he's an inarticulate mook.
BRADFORD: He was a fabulous tactician but he didn't
have the words for tactics.
SCHIFRIN: He was smart but he wasn't articulate.
OTERO: Michael taught by example.
SCHIFRIN: He could perform. He could show you.
Just grab the weapon. This is how you do it.
HARKNESS: Then you listen to what his words
are and you're like he’s somebody
who's got a ton of depth.
SCHIFRIN: And yet like any great fencer,
there's something hidden. He's might appear friendly,
but he's going to try to soundly defeat you.
HARKNESS: He could suss out what a person is about
very quickly.
But we also say that about fencing.
You know if you're on the strip with somebody your
if you're fencing with somebody, you know what they're about.
SCHIFRIN: You really do meet somebody on the fencing strip.
Because you get to know who they are. And sadly,
and unfortunately, you get to know who you are.
HARKNESS: You can't be that good and not understand
things at a really deep level.
NARRATOR: Although he looked the part of a conforming
member of society,
some things about D’Asaro never changed.
KONECNY: He wasn't a typical fencing coach.
He was not straight laced.
HURST: There was a favorable view of substance
abuse with that team.
CHING: When it came to his job,
he was sober as he needed to be.
MASSIALAS: He never drank. He never smoked.
He never dropped acid that I knew of when we worked.
CHING: After we'd won, we’d get really drunk.
HARKNESS: As soon as we got in,
he'd be drinking.
Seemed only fair because probably about
a third of the team was drinking during the tournaments.
SCHIFRIN: We worked hard at San Jose State.
We worked very very hard. We trained very very hard.
And we played hard.
HARKNESS: I know there's a lot of marijuana use
and some cocaine use.
You know nobody drug tests a coach.
KNIES: Michael believed that fencing was more
than just a physical sport.
There was a spiritual and certain intellectual side.
SCHIFRIN: We go to Michael D’Asaro’s house
for Christmas and everybody is given a little baggie.
KNIES: He gave the members of the fencing
team magic mushrooms.
KONECNY: With a little you know note.
Go to the mountains in Santa Cruz
or wherever with a friend and just have a nice day.
SCHIFRIN: I did take those mushrooms and they were amazing.
KNIES: We went out to Big Basin out
in the Redwoods in the in the forest
and we ate our shrooms and we really
had this kind of Alice in Wonderland
profound experience.
SCHIFRIN: And it was expected that we would take these
and that's going to be a mind expanding experience.
KNIES: Did it affect my my fencing and make me
a better competitor.
I ended up winning the Western intercollegiate
Pacific Coast championships. So,
I believe that there was a connection.
SCHIFRIN: That's outrageous now to think of a coach
giving illegal hallucinogens to the whole team.
KNIES: Michael was very much a shaman.
And that was part of his charisma
that it wasn't just all macho you know hit them
first hit them harder.
That there was a broader context to being
able to make the touch first.
SCHIFRIN: But we kind of like well that was Michael.
Oh is that what the coach wants us to do.
That sounds like a wonderful idea.
So there's this kind of metaphysical
quality that he tried to imbue and inspire in us.
NARRATOR: Harsh training methods and quirky behavior
are only acceptable as long as they produce
positive results.
Despite all the rumors and turmoil surrounding
the San Jose State team,
no one can claim they weren't successful.
DECHAINE: They all seemed to respond to him in a way
that allowed him to bring out the very best in them.
HURST: Can always tell a pretty good coach
when there's a certain consistency you know
from year to year to year. Not just based on some stars.
Of course,
you're going to have a really good year if you have
some stars.
SCHIFRIN: His team was the baddest, partiest,
hardest working, most winningest.
We love being Michael's students.
NARRATOR: Other people's views of D’Asaro
weren't quite as favorable.
HAYES: I took one of my students to one
of his workshops and suggested that she even go to San Jose,
take some lessons.
But Michael decided that the situation was not
that he was going to augment that students
instruction but that he was going
to take that student.
I remember one of the kitchen table
conversations we had where Michael was saying
to me Look this is how it is.
They're big fish and there little fish and the big fish
eat the little fish until the bigger fish comes
along and then the bigger fish eats that one.
NARRATOR: By 1983,
D’Asaro was no longer being chosen to coach
the national squad.
Drug and alcohol use were cited as the reasons for the ban.
D'ASARO, JR.: Again there are so many sides to this.
Him the great fencer him the great coach.
Him the not so great dad. But him the great mentor.
COSTIN: He was super intelligent in how
to teach fencing. He was teaching three weapons.
I don't think that's an easy thing.
HARKNESS: Some people who know him marginally will
know him as hard drinking boozing,
drug taking mad man.
PLATT: The fact that he looked like he did
drugs and then it turns out that he did might have really
negatively affected how Americans view this person
who they thought maybe unfairly maybe fairly
should have been an ambassador for American fencing.
KATZOFF: He really embraced the hippie life and all
that went with it. So there were some problems.
HURST: Now we're not having some guy
who essentially advocates drug use as one of our coaches.
I mean we're not that stupid.
SCHIFRIN: I did know a lot of the east coast fencing
politics hated Michael D’Asaro.
HURST: It certainly was not a question that his his skills
had not been recognized.
MASSIALAS: And then there was an incident after
eighty one world champs...
I mean the World University Games
that he was kind of hanging out.
And they had gone out drinking after the tournament
was over and so on so forth.
They came back and then they were able
to use really a minorly nothing but then used
it as an excuse to sort of blackball him from being
coach from that point on,
which included the 84 Olympics which he had three
students on the team. Myself being one of them.
HURST: The decision was was regrettable
and even the people making it didn't really want to do
it but they felt they had no choice.
MASSIALAS: When he was working,
he was very serious.
And I know because you couldn't be
stoned and be working with me at a level
without me knowing it.
SCHIFRIN: He never missed a practice.
I never missed a lesson.
He's still ran the hardest footwork sessions.
NARRATOR: In 1985, at only forty 47 years of age,
D’Asaro retired from San Jose State University.
The university opted to cancel the varsity
fencing program at the same time.
MARTINEZ: It was really sad to see the program stop.
KOLOMBATOVICH: I think he simply sort
of burnt out by all the constant constant pressure.
D'ASARO, JR.: When I was living with him
he was drinking heavily, smoking pot,
mushrooms things like that.
And then all of a sudden he's like well
I'm going to become vegetarian,
we're all going to move up to Oregon and live off the land.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro decided to move to Ashland, Oregon,
an area he had looked into with his old fencing pal,
Charles Selberg.
SCHIFRIN: I know he just wanted to cash out and buy
a house without having any payments.
MACLELLAN: We moved into Oregon and left
San Jose State.
I don't think there was anything at San Jose State
that caused Michael to want to do that.
It was just another opportunity for him to drop out.
MASSIALAS: I think had he been in that same
path as he was and being selected and participating,
I think he would have deferred those things until a later time.
Maybe after 84 85.
KOLOMBATOVICH: He stopped working at the high
high level that he had.
So it was some sort of a retirement.
But at the same time his coaching was still
right on the money.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro’s marriage to Gay did not
survive the move to Oregon.
JOHNSON: When you have, I think,
a big age difference like there is between them.
You're having these different experiences
of evolution in your life.
SCHIFRIN: He was her first love.
She was what 14 15 even younger when they met
and then they got married when she’s 20
and they're together you know through her 30s you know.
So like enough already.
BRADFORD: As she ages, she's mellowing.
As Michael aged, he did not mellow.
SCHIFRIN: They always seemed like chalk and cheese.
You know they always seemed like what is Gay
doing with Michael?
KOLOMBATOVICH: I think it simply got old.
Mike's drinking certainly was part of that.
MACLELLAN: I essentially went from my father to my
father and it was time to disengage from my father.
D'ASARO, JR.: If I had to guess he just
outgrew him.
NONOMURA, G: At the time Gay wanted to move
forward with a career.
And she was working on becoming a clinical psychologist.
So Michael and I went into this psychotherapy training.
After like three sessions, Michael dropped out.
Because he couldn't be around people
and reveal himself.
And that was so significant to me. In my,
my life where I was growing and delving deeper and growing.
And he was caving in. And that impacted me so much.
And I never could see him the same after that.
A little sad here. So I realized,
it was time for me to be independent and continue
my growth and exploration.
And I told Michael I wanted to separate.
TARASCIO: He was devastated.
MACLELLAN: When I chose to leave him,
he truly still loved me.
MARTINEZ: So that whole idyllic lifestyle
that they were putting together up in Ashland was gone.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro decided to leave Oregon and accepted
a coaching position in Los Angeles.
SHAW: When I heard that Gay and Michael were divorcing,
the moment I heard it,
I told Ted Katzoff I'm calling Michael.
COSTIN: First when I met him,
he was the coach of United States.
I was like Demi-god to me.
But then when I met him again at Westside,
he looked a little bit like a bum from New York City.
NONOMURA, G: He grew his hair back out in Los Angeles.
He was back to having his long main affair again.
MASSIALAS: In many ways had gone back
to his Haight Ashbury days at that point in time.
RUSSELL: I saw this guy with long hair and these skull
rings and different things you know coming up to me
and looking at me as if he's recognized me
and I was like who is this guy?
And then I looked into his eyes and I’m like Oh my gosh.
You know Stro.
HARKNESS: The big change was when he he and Gay split
and he moved to Los Angeles and that's where I really
think he started to become more or less of that fighter and more
of a maybe more philosophical.
D'ASARO, JR.: That was a totally different guy.
He was giving lessons in flip flops.
And he’s laughing.
D'ASARO OLD: I’m teaching fencing now as a means
of personal expression. Personal Development.
Get in tune with yourself. And people were like Oh,
your father's the best. He's so sweet. I’m like sweet.
Are you insane.
RUSSELL: I honestly don't recall why I ended up just,
you know, trying a lesson with Michael.
I knew he was kind of unmistakable character
and he was somebody who I knew had been
a great fencer and he had coached a lot
of great athletes.
KATZOFF: He was giving wonderful great lessons
and making great corrections and really
helping people along without having to be
verbally crazy.
SHAW: He was just of course so charismatic and so good.
COSTIN: At work he was always a little bit on the sloppy side.
OTERO: When he came to Los Angeles
and thought you know I'm going to take lessons again.
I can't face competitively.
I've got a knee but I can take a lesson.
THOMPSON: He had a huge smile on his face
every time I saw him.
I mean he was somebody who was laughing all the time.
He didn't live lavishly, that's for sure.
He he lived in a simple apartment.
SHAW: He seemed to get along with anybody and everybody.
He just seemed to be you know just knowledgeable,
good natured, affable, powerful, funny.
MARTINEZ: I felt that there was something lost.
Because last time I saw him was with Charles Selberg
in the Colestin Valley.
You know and and now he's in L.A.
some apartment teaching fencing. Not his salle.
RUSSELL: There was a sense of frustration
because he had tried to positively change the sport
for years and years and years.
And at the end he never really felt that he did.
NARRATOR: As the 1990s drew to a close,
D’Asaro health started to fail.
He beat colon cancer only to succumb to another
form of the disease.
SHAW: The first thing that started to happen,
that i knew something was wrong,
was he was getting angry at people at the club
for encroaching on his space.
OTERO: There I was one night, taking a lesson with Michael.
We're having a wonderful time.
D'ASARO, JR.: I had a lesson over here.
He had a lesson next to me.
And he kept floating into my strip.
SHAW: He was losing his equilibrium
and he was slanting off.
D'ASARO, JR.: I’d smack him in the head.
Get the fuck off my strip. Stay on your own strip.
SHAW: And he was getting pissed off at people.
Watch the space. Stop bothering me.
OTERO: Michael asked me to do an action. I did.
And then he oriented himself for the next
action pointing it looking straight ahead is six o'clock.
He was pointing off, like eight o'clock.
SHAW: And he didn't realize that he was going slanted.
OTERO: Michael, what's going on?
D'ASARO, JR.: Are you OK.
OTERO: In the middle of that lesson,
his brain tumor kicked in.
D'ASARO, JR.: It was a geobalstoma
that was right in a place they couldn't operate on.
OTERO: He broke in that lesson
and never came back.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro attended his last national
championship in 2000.
MACLELLAN: He walked into this tournament
and he was very puffy.
His skin was like alligator and gray.
And it just shocked the crap out of me.
HARUTUNIAN: I looked to the Mike. I feel very,
very sad.
RUSSELL: And he was sitting just looking out over
everything that was happening.
It was after that that I realized
that he was there saying goodbye.
HINTON: You know seeing Michael,
this strong guy,
you know being just worn down by his illness, man.
It was pretty bad.
HARKNESS: Stro was down in L.A..
Brain tumors progressing.
GOLDSTEIN: He knew he had some kind of fatal
thing happening.
HARKNESS: A lot of people down in L.A.
were just like yeah whatever.
He's just gonna drink himself to death.
They didn't didn't seem to have much of a use for him.
And Connie Yu, because Connie Yu is both a smart person
and a compassionate person,
was just like you know we always Stro come up
once a year and do a camp.
Let's have Stro come up and do a camp.
YU: The students who had learned from him
over these workshops,
when they saw him at that last workshop there
was one kid Charlie Knable,
he just it's just it's awful seeing Michael like this.
HARKNESS: So, we do the camp. I stand in for him.
It would go well. He'd field questions.
He’d kind of leaning against one the pillars.
He could still move his hand somewhat.
So that was fine.
It was a good reminder of how good
he was that even in that condition
that he was still engaging. He could still teach.
GOLDSTEIN: I think he resolved in his own mind
what was going to take place. Because he had lived that way.
He was able to meet things head on.
D'ASARO, JR.: Between the drugs they were giving him
that affected brain so badly,
there wasn’t a whole lot of hey let's let's
clear up past 40 years.
We never really had that moment that why did you this.
Why did you leave us. But I miss him.
I've got lots of questions.
NARRATOR: D’Asaro kept teaching right up until the end.
HARKNESS: So he lights up and he’s smoking. He goes,
you know I was a vegetarian for a while. Right. Said yeah,
when you lived with Gay. So what do I get?
Fucking stomach cancer. I beat that.
You know I've been smoking since I was 12.
How are my lungs? Perfect. What do I get?
Fuckin' brain tumor.
It just goes to show something's going to get you.
Just don't worry about it.
BURCHARD: Later on,
we realized that you know that was that amazing
attitude in the face of imminent death that he didn't care.
SCHIFRIN: A few months before he died,
he visited me and he had no hair.
He was bald from chemotherapy and he was barely walking.
This man who had been this cat, this predator, this cheetah,
this panther on the Strip.
Who had humbled me in my physical prime.
He'd humbled me. Here he can barely walk.
He needs help going to the bathroom.
And he's told me about how difficult it was for him
to ask for help.
He told me that his mother told him you never ask for anything.
And he said but Peter he said, that's not the hardest part.
It's not asking. It's allowing the help,
allowing someone to help me go to the bathroom.
Allowing some to catch my arm.
BURCHARD: He would tell us that can only control
what you can control.
You can control the fact that you have
practiced more than anyone else.
You can control you're in better shape than anyone else.
You can control your technique. You can control your distance.
You can control all of that. You can't control the referee.
You can't control the opponent you're going to have.
You can't control that stuff. But if you do control,
and are better prepared, all the things you can control,
your chances of success are much better.
And so I, I continue to use that today.
I had this wonderful sweet dinner at Connie Yu’s house.
He was so full of life and joyful and joking with us.
You know, let me show you my brain scan.
And to see him in this,
in this condition and then to see him still
so full of life was was a lesson I'll never forget.
JOHNSON: The three of us came together when he was very ill,
rented a hotel suite and we stayed and visited
him before he passed.
MACLELLAN: It was bittersweet.
We talked about old times.
JOHNSON: And it was kind of the perfect goodbye.
MACLELLAN: But it was so sad to see him in that condition.
You know after seeing the vibrant
Michael all those years.
JOHNSON: We had fun and reminisced and thanked him.
KATZOFF: I think he was accepting of it.
It wasn't kind to be a battle down to the wire, you know,
like Cyrano de Bergerac, you know,
fencing against the specter of death.
BRADFORD: Michael always taught us it was it's not
over till the fat lady sings.
LOSONCZY: You’re like on a cliff,
holding your fingers and it's 4 0. But you have the ability
to bring it up to 4 4 and to win.
HARKNESS: However tired you are. However beat up,
however much pain you're in, you can still go further.
SCHIFRIN: He believed he was going to beat it,
until he didn't.
D'ASARO, BARBARA: I think it was December 12th
and Anna Harris called me and told me my
brother passed away.
LOSONCZY: When I found out that he had passed away,
it was part of me passing away.
PLATT: As of today, we're living in a greyer world.
Than Michael really for for me as a as a fencing coach
and as a person who knew him and knew of him and heard
stories about him,
he really did make the world a more colorful place.
BLUM: He produced good fencers.
HARKNESS: He had fencers on every Olympic
team from 76 to 88.
BRADFORD: He was part of opening the door
for women's sports because he took us
seriously when so many other males in the sport
of fencing were poo pooing us.
CHING: His legacy like any great master all that resides
within his students.
KATZOFF: So many of his top students are still
around as coaches.
JOHNSON: He was not of the establishment
but his champions became part of the establishment.
SCHIFRIN: He's that the pebble
and then we are the ripples.
MASSIALAS: I don't think I would be doing now
what I'm doing at this level of success without being able
to have the same passion and that he helped
instill in me.
HINTON: We carried on what he he he he gave us.
CHING: Greg Massialas’s kid is doing phenomenal.
I think you can trace that directly to the influence
of Michael D’Asaro.
MASSIALAS: My students came back with three medals
from the Olympics something that would've
been sort of unheard of.
JOHNSON: Elevated the game. He elevated the consciousness.
He elevated the art.
BRADFORD: He opened the door for fencers around
the country by producing Olympians on the West Coast.
When we were all supposed to be from the East Coast.
KOLOMBATOVICH: A lot of people are dead now
we don't talk about because they're not
worth talking about.
And he certainly is someone that is.
SCHIFRIN: When he was inducted
to the San Jose State hall of fame I spoke.
And I called him an asshole. But he was. He was cruel.
He could be really horrible you know.
But he was so many things.
HINTON: And that was one of the things I remember
you know him really you know, building,
building me up you know.
Making me believe in myself more.
YU: She said Michael always believed in me.
And that made the difference.
D'ASARO, JR.: He's just a mentor.
Somebody who could take fencing and use
that as a metaphor for life.
COSTIN: Once you know him,
it's kind of difficult to forget about him.
When I think about this coach that had the hugest impact,
really made me,
made everything I was as a fencer, it was Stro.
And yet, technically,
I probably worked with him for the least amount of time.
SCHIFRIN: I remember asking him like why, why are you coach,
Stro? You know. And he goes, it's all I know how to do.
COSTIN: I miss him.
SHAW: He was a natural referee. Natural.
Everything about fencing, he could eat it.
HARKNESS: But I would not have traded that time
for anything. That was formative.
SCHIFRIN: And he helped me make the Olympic team.
He really helped me make the Olympic team.
BRADFORD: Michael took me in and tolerated my
ignorance in the beginning, which was hard for him.
He really made me the fencer that I was.
D'ASARO, JR.: He did everything on his own terms.
You know, look,
I'm gonna I'm gonna prove to you that I'm the best.
No matter what — no matter what I'm wearing.
No matter how I look.
No matter what my hair length is.
No matter who I'm fucking. I'm the best.
HARKNESS: He's a very complex person.
And that's I mean that to me was how I remember him.
BRADFORD: You know sometimes when I'm in a bit of a spot
or somebody is, you know,
rubbing me wrong or something's going wrong, I can,
I can hear Michael saying Well fuck you.
BRADFORD: Thank you Michael the sorrow. Thank you.
Thank you strobe taskmaster. Shaman. Leader. And.
Just a brilliant. Fencing. Strobe.