Harnessing Anger

Pete Westbrook's story takes him from urban poverty and a broken family to the highest reaches of sports excellence as 13-time U.S. National sabre champion, 6-time Olympian, and a man who reclaimed the aristocratic art of fencing as a sport available to one and all. As Westbrook tells it, he was able to make this journey because he was blessed with riches: a caring mother, a tough coach, and a martial art requiring skills that could be applied off the mat as well as on. Although traditionally fencing has been the domain of white European aristocrats, a number of history's great fencers have been black, like Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who became one of Napoleon's generals (and was the father of Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo). Pete Westbrook has given the history of fencing an American twist. After taking up the sport at the urging of his mother when he was fourteen years old, he learned its psychological discipline and flexible strategy, two keys to fencing that brought him not only national and world championships, but spiritual peace and self-knowledge as well.