Notre Dame has seven Heisman Trophy winners. It will not be long until it has that many secure fencing gold medals.The third came Sunday at the Tokyo Olympics, where Lee Kiefer beat protecting champion Inna Deriglazova of Russia 15-13 in the females’s aluminum foil final.Kiefer duped her mask after the last point
and also screamed,”Oh my God!” Mariel Zagunis, additionally a Notre Dame graduate, is the
only various other American fencer to earn gold, winning females’s saber events at Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. Kiefer’s gold is the initial in Tokyo by an athlete with an Indiana connection. Indiana Olympians won 19 medals at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Kiefer, 27, a four-time NCAA champion as well as three-time Olympian
, is a medical pupil at the College of Kentucky. Her spouse, Gerek Meinhardt, won a team bronze in foil in 2016. Notre Dame established the Lee Kiefer/Gerek Meinhardt Honor in 2018, honoring a fencer offering time selflessly as well as humbly in training.Kiefer is so tiny– 5-4, 110 extra pounds– that it can be difficult to determine her sport in the Olympic Village.Marathoner? Gymnast? Coxswain?”Individuals possibly just assume I attend,”she once said.She took lessons in horseback riding as well as piano prior to committing herself to secure fencing. During the pandemic, she trained on a secure fencing strip she helped integrate in her parents’basement.She positioned
fifth in foil in 2012 and 10th in 2016. As long as 10 years earlier, her bronze made her the second American women fencer to win a medal at the elderly World Championships.
“It’s such an incredible feeling that I show my coach, I show my other half, with my family members, just everyone that’s belonged of this,”Kiefer claimed. “I wish I could slice it up in little pieces and distributed it to every person I enjoy.”Fence has had a hang on her family.Her papa, Steve, was a fence captain at Battle each other. Her older sis, Alex, was an NCAA champion at Harvard. Her younger brother, Axel, has actually competed in the younger worlds. Kiefer said she was inspired by her
dad. “Prior to I left, my father composed me
a card, and he stated that we have actually been on this journey. We have actually done our ideal as well as our pot of gold has been filled the whole time as we relocated along and also simply being here is the topping on top,”she stated.”I simply feel so much love as well as I have so much to return to every person. My dad pushed me from the beginning. We utilized to bump heads all the time due to the fact that we are both so competitive and demand excellence, but right here we are. Thanks, papa.”Deriglazova, 31, won world
titles in foil in 2019, 2017 and 2015. She won a team silver in foil at the 2012 Olympics.She was disconsolate afterward. “However from the very beginning I did some blunders so I started to shed, she started to win, and now I was not so positive,”the Russian claimed.” I started to make even more mistakes, to be quicker, when I didn’t require to do that. I believe I got rid of an opportunity.
“Kiefer was 5-0 Sunday.She won 15-4 over Singapore’s Arnita Berthier (an additional Notre Dame fencer); 15-13 over Canada’s Eleanor Harvey, 15-11 over Japan’s Yuka Ueno; 15-6 over Russia’s Larisa Korobeynikova(RUS); 15-13 over Deriglazova.Kiefer’s mommy, Teresa, is from the Philippines. The fencer is amongst a collection of popular Filipino American
athletes that includes baseball bottle Tim Lincecum, football players Tedy Bruschi and Roman Gabriel, basketball player Nate Robinson, figure skater Tai Babilonia, gymnast Kyla Ross as well as biker Coryn Rivera.Contact IndyStar reporter David Woods at david.woods@indystar.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.