By Bryan Wendell
USA Fencing
MILAN, Italy — By now it’s acceptable to wonder whether Lee Kiefer OLY leaves a little extra room in her suitcase when she travels to the Fencing World Championships.
Because as has been the case at the last five Senior Worlds, Kiefer is bringing home a shiny souvenir.
Kiefer, who fences at Bluegrass Fencers’ Club and is coached by Amgad Khazbak, won an individual bronze medal on Wednesday, Day 5 of the 2023 Fencing World Championships in Italy.
The result means that Kiefer ends the season as world No. 1 in Women’s Foil for the second season in a row.
Kiefer, the reigning Olympic champion in women’s foil, has now medaled at five straight Senior World Championships:
• 2011 Senior Worlds: Bronze in Individual
• 2017 Senior Worlds: Silver in Team
• 2018 Senior Worlds: Gold in Team
• 2019 Senior Worlds: Bronze in Team
• 2022 Senior Worlds: Bronze in Individual, Silver in Team
• 2023 Senior Worlds: Bronze in Individual
This is Kiefer’s third individual medal at Senior Worlds and comes 12 years after she won her first Senior Worlds medal — also in Italy. At just 17 years old in 2011, Kiefer won individual bronze at the World Championships in the Sicilian city of Catania.
To secure her medal, Kiefer had to defeat 12-time German champion and 2023 Shanghai Grand Prix winner Anne Sauer of Germany. Kiefer left little doubt in their quarterfinal match, winning 15-7.
A round earlier, Kiefer faced off against teammate Jackie Dubrovich OLY (New Jersey Fencing Alliance) — an all-USA matchup that never fails to entertain those lucky enough to see these two talented women square off.
As is customary when two athletes from the same country fence, their coaching boxes were empty. The women were on their own.
In fact, their partners — Kiefer’s husband, Gerek Meinhardt OLY, and Dubrovich’s coach and fiancé, Brian Kaneshige, sat together on the complete opposite side of the section of eight video replay strips known as the “Coloured Pistes.” While they watched Kiefer and Dubrovich fence in the far background, their foreground view was of another Team USA athlete: Maia Weintraub (Fencers Club, Fencing Academy of Philadelphia, Princeton University).
While Weintraub lost that particular round of 16 bout, she can be proud of her 13th place finish this year — one better than her result from a year ago when she upset Italy’s Alice Volpi, who won the gold medal on Wednesday for Italy.
All four Women’s Foil fencers had impressive showings for Team USA and finished in the top 32 — a strong sign for their hopes of contending for a medal in the Women’s Foil team event, which begins Friday.
Photo by #BizziTeam/USA Olympics