After protesting a little too heatedly at one tournament and getting disqualified, he switched to épée. “Épée matches are rarely decided by judgment calls,” he explains. In épée, points are awarded solely on the basis of which fencer makes a touch first, according to electronic scoring machines.

During Bianchi’s childhood, Milan was a hotbed for épée fencing—Milanese épée master Edoardo Mangiarotti won more Olympic medals and world championships than any other fencer in history—and by 14, Bianchi was going one-on-one with some of Italy’s top teens. He was a member of two clubs, Giardino and Mangiarotti, that won five Italian team titles; Mangiarotti finished second at the 1979 European Club championships. Bianchi made the national team and seemed a lock to represent Italy at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow until the Italian Federation announced a partial boycott to protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “Italy only sent three of its five épéeists,” says Bianchi. He was not one of them.

Despite that disappointment, Bianchi continued to fence. He was awarded a fencing scholarship to Wayne State University in Michigan, where he won the N.C.A.A. Division I individual épée crowns in l983 and 1984, and led the Tartars to four national team titles. After graduating, he got an M.B.A. at the University of Washington, in Seattle. He joined Citigroup in 1987 and fenced after work with the New York Athletic Club, but he found it was taking up too much time. He quit altogether in 1989, after the N.Y.A.C. épée team won its second straight national title.

Bianchi’s interest in fencing was reignited in spring 2006 by his son, who had begun taking lessons near their home in Dobbs Ferry, New York. “It was your typical midlife crisis,” Bianchi says. “Eighty percent of the people in my situation buy a Mercedes convertible, 19 percent find a 20-year-old lover, and 1 pecent go back to the sport they love. I was in that last group.”

For four months, he trained with Ukrainian coach Alexey Cheremsky, a former member of the Soviet Union’s national team. Bianchi practiced four times a week, supplementing his lessons with stretching, yoga, and twice-weekly visits to a chiropractor. Eventually he found himself in Atlanta, facing competitors who were all at least 15 years younger than him.

From her perch in the stands at the Nationals, Lynn Bianchi overheard a couple of spectators discussing her husband. “See that guy over there?” said one. “He’s old and he’s fat and he’s bald, but he kicked the other guys’ butts.”