Which sport does Bhavani Devi play?
Hailing from the city of Chennai, Bhavani Devi sent the entire nation into a frenzy when the news of her qualification to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics broke somewhere in March 2021. Since then, Bhavani Devi has been under constant media attention, with the latest reports suggesting that she is training with the Italian team in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games. Bhavani Devi competes in the sport of Fencing and specialises in Sabre. Fencing is a sport in which the athletes or fencers try to hit their opponents at valid target areas of the body. It is played in three different categories  Epee, Foil and Sabre. The individual events of Epee and Foil are held over three periods of three minutes each. The purpose of the fencer is to collect points by hitting valid target areas. The first to reach 15 points or the one who leads after all the three periods wins. While in Sabre  the event which Bhavani Devi specialises in, two periods are held with a break taken when either of the fencers reaches 8 points. The valid target areas also differ in each of these categories. While the target area in Epee is the entire body, it is just the torso and back in Foil. On the other hand, in Sabre, the target areas include the torso, head and arms. Though Fencing has been a part of the Olympics ever since its first edition at Athens in 1896, the 27-year-old Bhavani Devi is the first-ever Indian to qualify for the sport in their Olympics history.