Electronic scoring equipment was introduced in 1936 in the épée events when Mangiarotti won a gold medal with the other members of the Italian team.

Giuseppe Mangiarotti, a Milanese fencing master and 17 times national épée champion, planned his son’s championship career and molded him into an awkward opponent by converting a natural right-hander to a left-hander.

Dario Mangiarotti, older brother of the Edoardo, won the world title in Cairo in 1949 and a gold and two silver in the Olympics.

Even at such an early stage in his career, the young Mangiarotti showed the strong determination and personality that was to separate him from other international competitors in both foil and épée in the 1950s.

Against a record field of 76 competitors Edoardo Mangiarotti won the Olympic épée individual gold medal with decisive style.

The drama heightened after the first section of the play off when Mangiarotti, Carlo Pavesi and Giuseppe Delfino all had one win and one loss.

The second barrage broke the deadlock; Mangiarotti tired towards midnight and lost both his bouts, then Pavesi beat Delfino to clinch the gold medal.

Mangiarotti retired in 1961 and left the Olympic fencing arena as the greatest combined épée and foil fencer the world had ever seen.

In 2003, the International Olympic Committee awarded Edoardo Mangiarotti with a Platinum Wreath, with a document that stated that: "Edoardo Mangiarotti's total of 39 gold, silver & bronze medals in Olympic & World Fencing Championships, which earns him the distinction of being the greatest Fencer in that sport's history."