[2] The competition format continued the pool play round-robin from prior years, but increased the number of touches to win a bout to 3.

[3] Each of the four fencers from one team would face each of the four from the other, for a total of 16 bouts per match.

Matches were sometimes stopped when one team had mathematically won (e.g., Belgium against Canada was stopped at 9–2), but sometimes not (United States against Canada played all the way to 15–1).

Pool matches unnecessary to the result were not played (with Belgium and the United States both beating Canada, the result between those two countries would not affect qualification and thus they did not face each other; the same thing happened in the semifinal with Italy and Belgium).

It ended in an 8–8 tie, broken by touches against at 28 for the United States to 33 for Denmark.