Lee Kiefer may live in Lexington, Ky. and plans to attend college at Notre Dame, but the 17-year-old rising fencing star was born in Cleveland, Oh. and will be participating at the 2012 Olympic games in London as a member of the American foil team.
According to a feature on ESPN, Kiefer is ranked seventh in the world in foil and has won 14 gold medals at several events including the 2010 Cadet World Championships and the 2009 Junior World Championships:
Last year, she was the only fencer to win individual medals at the Senior, Youth (under 20) and Cadet (under 17) world championships. She took bronze at the Senior event, becoming just the second American female to win an individual foil medal at the event and the first since Iris Zimmerman in 1999. She took silver in the other two.
She comes from a good fencing pedigree as her father, Steve, was once the fencing captain at Duke and her sister, Alex, won a National Championship at Harvard in foil. After the Olympics, Lee Kiefer will begin her college studies in South Bend on a fencing scholarship.
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