PARIS (AP) — Lee Kiefer received 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 USA.
Kiefer received 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 stress 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 received 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 bike accident. “He can be so joyful 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 extremely essential particular person to maintain me feeling essential 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 undoubtedly extra joyful than disenchanted,” Scruggs mentioned. “I feel that it was stunning for me to be right here within the first place, so I don’t even suppose I’ve had time to course of shedding, if I’m being sincere. Simply stunning and simply tremendous grateful.”
It continues a fast 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 may make the workforce, till final yr, I made my first senior workforce,” she mentioned. “So to come back out right here and medal is simply insane.”
Scruggs mentioned she needs 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 considering for now,” she mentioned.
Eleanor Harvey grew to become 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 lads’s epee gold medal. It was Japan’s first gold in a person Olympic fencing occasion.
The vocal house 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 received the bronze for Egypt 8-7 in time beyond regulation towards Hungary’s Tibor Andrasfi.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games