The men's team sabre was one of seven fencing events on the fencing at the 1948 Summer Olympics programme. It was the eighth appearance of the event. The competition was held from 10 August 1948 to 11 August 1948. 85 fencers from 17 nations competed.[1]
The competition format continued the pool play round-robin from prior years. 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. The team that won more bouts won the match, with competition potentially stopping when one team reached 9 points out of the possible 16 (this did not always occur and matches sometimes continued). If the bouts were 8–8, touches received was used to determine the winning team. Pool matches unnecessary to the result were not played.[2]
In the first pairings, Italy defeated Belgium and Hungary beat the United States, each by a score of 10–6. Hungary (9–1 over Belgium) and Italy (8–8 over the United States, prevailing by touches received 59–61) won again in the second set of matches as well. The United States beat Belgium 10–5 in a de facto bronze medal match, while Hungary prevailed 10–6 over Italy for the gold medal.
