USA Fencing completed its Paris Olympic roster by naming its last five athletes to the team on Wednesday, bringing the total to 20 fencers.
The last athletes to qualify are the fourth-ranked fencers in men’s and women’s foil and sabre and women’s épée, who are eligible to be subbed into the team event only:
Miles Chamley-Watson (men’s foil)
Filip Dolegiewicz (men’s sabre)
Maia Weintraub (women’s foil)
Maia Chamberlain (women’s sabre)
Kat Holmes (women’s épée)
They join the first 15 fencers who previously qualified for both individual and team events, led by Tokyo Olympic women’s foil gold medalist Lee Kiefer and reigning men’s sabre world champion Eli Dershwitz.
Of the last five to make it, Chamley-Watson, at age 34, becomes the oldest member of the team. Chamley-Watson, the 2013 individual world champion and a 2016 Olympic team event bronze medalist, returns after not qualifying for Tokyo.
The U.S. men’s foil team includes three of the top nine in the world rankings: No. 1 Nick Itkin, No. 5 Alexander Massialas and No. 9 Gerek Meinhardt. Chamley-Watson is 21st in the world.
Holmes. 30, qualified for her third Olympics after helping the épée team to fifth-place finishes in Rio and Tokyo.
Dolegiewicz won the 2022 NCAA title for Harvard. Chamberlain and Weintraub were Princeton teammates and both NCAA champions. All three are first-time Olympians.
Paris marks the first Olympics to not include Mariel Zagunis, the 2004 and 2008 Olympic women’s sabre champion, since the 2000 Sydney Games. Zagunis stepped away from international competition after fencing at the Tokyo Games at age 36.
