Lexington’s Lee Kiefer has put herself on an elite list in Kentucky sports history

For Lee Kiefer, what differentiated her second Olympics gold medal in women’s foil fencing from the first one she won three years ago in Tokyo was family.

On Sunday in Paris, Kiefer claimed gold in front of an energetic crowd that included her family and several close friends.

When the 2012 alumna of Lexington’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School first won Olympics gold in 2021, coronavirus containment protocols in Japan meant that she did so in a venue without spectators.

“It’s so special to have my family (here), all my best friends who I haven’t even seen,” Kiefer said. “I tried to spot them in the crowd. But it makes it so much fuller.”

In the majestic setting of the Grand Palais in Paris, Kiefer scored a dominant 15-6 win Sunday over fellow American Lauren Scruggs to earn a second consecutive gold medal.

In so doing, Kiefer joined Mariel Zagunis (women’s saber in 2004 and 2008) as the only American fencers with two individual Olympic gold medals.

The Lexington product also joined Italy’s Valentina Vezzali (three) and Hungary’s Ilona Elek (two) as the only women with multiple Olympics gold medals in foil fencing.

What I know about fencing could be crammed into a sewing thimble — and there would still be ample empty space inside. So I will leave it to others to note that Kiefer, 30, has continuously worked to refine her craft, adding more offensive aggression to what was long an instinctively defensive approach to fencing.

What I do have some knowledge of is Kentucky sports history. By earning a second Olympics gold medal, Kiefer has put herself in rarefied air for an athlete who grew up in the commonwealth.

In winning her first Olympics gold medal three years ago in Tokyo, Kiefer placed her name on a list with such Kentucky sports icons as Muhammad Ali (gold as a light heavyweight boxer in 1960) and Mary T. Meager (three gold medals in swimming in 1984) as homegrown Olympic gold medalists.

By adding a second gold, Kiefer joins Meagher and such figures from long ago as Owen County’s Willis Lee (five gold medals in team shooting events in 1920) and Louisville native Ralph Waldo Rose (gold medals in 1904, 1908 and 1912 in various iterations of discus throwing) as Kentuckians with more than one Olympics gold medal.

Suffice to say, there has not been an awful lot of what Kiefer just achieved in the sports history of the commonwealth.

Kiefer’s journey to becoming a two-time Olympics gold medalist is part of a long-running family story.

When his three children were little, Steven Kiefer, a Lexington neurosurgeon and one-time captain of the Duke University fencing team, famously commenced teaching them the sport he loved in the family dining room.

Eventually, Steven and Teresa Oropilla-Kiefer’s kids made basketball-centric Lexington into the world’s most unlikely fencing hot spot.

The Kiefers’ oldest child, daughter Alexandra, won the 2011 NCAA championship in foil fencing for Harvard. The youngest, son Axel, was NCAA runner-up competing for Notre Dame in foil fencing in 2019.

Middle child Lee, of course, has risen the highest of all. Prior to her Olympics gold medals, she won the individual NCAA championship in foil fencing four times for Notre Dame.

The first time the Kiefer family’s fencing story was told in the Herald-Leader was Feb. 27, 2005.

Back then, Samieh Shalash’s story began, “Lee Kiefer is a 10-year-old adults don’t want to mess with. She has beaten more than one on the fencing strip and is ranked second in the United States in her age division.”

Some 19 years later, Kiefer will get another chance to add to her Olympics medal total on Thursday in the team foil fencing competition.

Whether Kiefer’s fencing ambitions extend to going for a third straight gold medal in individual foil fencing four years from now in Los Angeles are unclear.

When she has been asked about her future in the sport in Paris, Kiefer has recited the remaining events in the current Olympics for herself and her husband, Team USA foil fencer Gerek Meinhardt, as the extent of the couple’s future commitments.

As is often mentioned, the couple has put their studies at the University of Kentucky medical school on hold to prepare for Paris.

Whatever her future in the sport, Kiefer has seemed to relish the complete experience of her fourth Olympic Games.

A video shared on various social media platforms taken from the American boat on the River Seine during Friday’s opening ceremony shows Kiefer calling out to Team USA basketball stars Steph Curry and A’ja Wilson.

Kiefer introduces herself, “Hi. Lee. Fencing,” and then trades Olympic pins with the hoopsters.

“These have been the most epic last few days of my life, being on the boat for the parade (of athletes) at the opening ceremony and then just taking in the grandeur of the Grand Palais,” Kiefer said Sunday in Paris. “This is not real life.”

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