PARIS (AP) — Lee Kiefer gained back-to-back gold medals in foil fencing and her teammate Lauren Scruggs took the silver Sunday to make historical past as the primary Black fencer to win an Olympic medal in a person girls’s occasion for the US.
Kiefer gained 15-6 within the last towards Scruggs and celebrated by pirouetting down the piste in pleasure. Realizing the U.S. anthem would play after the ultimate it doesn’t matter what “took the strain off,” Kiefer mentioned.
The vocal crowd within the cavernous Grand Palais was an enormous distinction to the hushed, empty venue in Chiba, Japan, the place Kiefer gained her first Olympic gold three years in the past underneath pandemic restrictions.
Kiefer devoted her win to Buckie Leach, who coached her to gold in Tokyo however died 20 days later in a motorbike accident. “He could be so glad for me,” she mentioned. “This one’s for him. I also have a image of him on my wall within the village.”
Kiefer’s gold medal is the fifth in a person occasion for a U.S. fencer. She follows Mariel Zagunis in 2004 and 2008 as the one American fencers to win gold in the identical occasion twice.
“Mariel, who did it earlier than me, she has been supporting me and being a very necessary particular person to maintain me feeling necessary and seen and empowered these previous years, so I actually wish to thank her for being that particular person,” Kiefer mentioned.
There hadn’t been an all-U.S. last in an Olympic fencing occasion since 2008, when Zagunis beat Sada Jacobson in saber as a part of an American podium sweep. Earlier than that, the final time it occurred was in 1904.
“I’m positively extra glad than upset,” Scruggs mentioned. “I believe that it was surprising for me to be right here within the first place, so I don’t even assume I’ve had time to course of dropping, if I’m being trustworthy. Simply surprising and simply tremendous grateful.”
It continues a speedy rise to the highest of world fencing for Scruggs, a 21-year-old Harvard pupil from Queens, New York.
“Possibly two years in the past, I actually thought I might make the staff, till final 12 months, I made my first senior staff,” she mentioned. “So to return out right here and medal is simply insane.”
Scruggs mentioned she desires to encourage younger Black fencers and present “that they’ve a spot within the sport.”
Kiefer is a part of a embellished Olympic energy couple.
Kiefer’s husband, Gerek Meinhardt, is a two-time Olympic bronze medalist in males’s foil who will compete in two occasions in Paris. Kiefer and Meinhardt are medical college students on the College of Kentucky who’ve taken go away from their research to pursue their Olympic desires.
Requested about her future, Kiefer reeled off her and Meinhardt’s remaining occasions in Paris. “That’s so far as we’re pondering for now,” she mentioned.
Eleanor Harvey turned the primary Canadian ever to win an Olympic fencing medal when she beat Alice Volpi of Italy 15-12 for the bronze.
Additionally Sunday, Japan’s Koki Kano beat France’s Yannick Borel 15-9 for the boys’s epee gold medal. It was Japan’s first gold in a person Olympic fencing occasion.
The vocal dwelling crowd needed to accept silver for the second day in a row after Auriane Mallo-Breton misplaced within the girls’s epee last Saturday.
Mohamed Elsayed gained the bronze for Egypt 8-7 in additional time towards Hungary’s Tibor Andrasfi.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games