History was made on July 25th as Lee Kiefer became the first American, male or female, ever to win individual foil fencing. After placing 5th in London and 10th in Rio, as well as nearly retiring after her second Olympics, her first place finish was an emotional victory. Yet in addition to the impressiveness Filipina American Lee has displayed on the piste, she has also been attending medical school at the University of Kentucky with her husband, four-time Olympic foil fencer Gerek Meinhardt, while training.

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Fencing seemingly has run in Lee’s family for the past decades. Her father, now a neurosurgeon, had once captained the Duke University fencing team. And while Kiefer attended Notre Dame where she fenced for the Fighting Irish and graduated in 2017, her sister fenced for Harvard, winning the ​​NCAA championships in 2011. Her younger brother also attended Notre Dame, coming in second in the 2019 NCAA Championship. Unsurprisingly, all three of them are foil fencers. 

While Lee’s Olympic gold medal is impressive, her past records are nothing to scoff at either. She is a nine time consecutive individual foil and ten time consecutive team foil Pan American Championship winner. Additionally, she’s placed countless times at World Championships, Grand Prixs, and World Cups for the past decade.

Her husband has been an instrumental part of her journey as well. They had met through their love of fencing, got engaged in 2017, and then married in 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were one another’s primary training partners. “I want to say for almost half a year, we basically exclusively fenced each other,” Kiefer said. Meinhardt had later posted “My wife just made my Olympic dream complete” after her victory.

When Kiefer returns from Tokyo, she’ll complete her pediatrics and surgery rotations at Kentucky. Though this time, as an Olympic gold medalist.