UK Med Student Gerek Meinhardt, Team USA Take Bronze in Foil
TOKYO (Aug. 1, 2021) — University of Kentucky College of Medicine student Gerek Meinhardt will bring home his second bronze medal as part of Team USA in the men's team foil competition at the delayed 2020 Olympics. The team defeated Japan 45-31. Meinhardt previously won a bronze medal in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Team USA’s starting lineup for the day included 2016 Olympic individual silver medalist Alex Massialas, of San Francisco, California, who competed in college at Stanford University; six-time Senior World medalist Gerek Meinhardt, a native of San Francisco, who competed for Notre Dame University; and 2018 Junior World Champion Nick Itkin, of Los Angeles, California, who also competed for Notre Dame. Race Imboden, of Brooklyn, New York, a 2019 Senior World Team Champion with Massialas and Meinhardt, was subbed in during the second rotation.
Meinhardt, like Massialas, trained with the Massialas Foundation.
Massialas, Meinhardt and Imboden won bronze together in 2016 with Itkin competing at his first Games this year.
Team USA defeated Germany, 45-36, in the quarter-finals, but lost to the Russian Olympic Committee, 45-41.
The bronze medal win by Team USA marks the second Olympic medal in the men’s team foil event for the United States since 1932.
Meinhardt earned his bachelor's degree from Notre Dame, where he met his wife, fellow UK medical student Lee Kiefer, the gold medal winner in women's individual foil.
Kiefer is the fourth UK student to medal in Tokyo and second in fencing. Read more on all 22 Wildcats competing in the Olympics here.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.