F1 Icon Lewis Hamilton Helps Put Fencing’s New Startup League on the Map in LA

Lewis Hamilton spent his Saturday night ringside at a fencing match in Los Angeles , which sounds like a setup until you remember who his best friend is. Miles Chamley-Watson, the 2013 world foil champion and the first African-American man to ever win a fencing world title, has spent the past year building a startup league called Fencing Club International , and the inaugural event sold out the Peacock Theater on November 22. Hamilton was there to watch.

He was not, it turns out, watching his guy win. Team Shield, captained by Hong Kong Olympic bronze medallist Ryan Choi, beat Chamley-Watson’s Team Sword 5-1 in the team format, and Choi closed the night by taking the headline solo bout 16-13 against the league’s own founder for a $10,000 prize. Hamilton posted about it on Instagram Stories afterward anyway, calling the whole thing a major achievement and reminding his followers that he and Chamley-Watson have been close since the 2015 Met Gala.

A decade of Olympics, after-parties, and now a fencing league launch. Why FCI Is Trying to Drag Fencing Into 2026 Fencing has an audience problem, and Chamley-Watson knows it better than anyone still competing. Olympic fencing is governed by rules that reward patience, footwork most viewers can’t read, and bouts that end before casual fans figure out who scored.

FCI’s pitch, per the league’s own materials and Chamley-Watson’s interviews around the launch, is to fix that with three changes: shorter and faster matches, AI-tracked blades that let broadcasters visualize hits in real time, and mixed-gender team rosters competing against each other directly. That last part is the bit traditionalists will argue about for years. Olympic fencing keeps men’s and women’s events strictly separate.