On and Off the Fence

Getting a Humbling 

Fencers run at each other hard down an aluminum strip with frightening weapons in hand. Each match has the classic look of swordplay. This is a sport that was developed in the 15th century, after all, as training for duels. Today, fencers score with touches, not stabs, but the effect is still daunting. 

Modern fencing has three events—foil, saber and épée—and they differ slightly in weapon weight and shape. Across each event, the movements are small and efficient. But the way fencers lunge forward, with their back foot pointing to the side, is repetitive. That’s why fencers are prone to overuse injuries in their legs and arms.

Meinhardt had used his legs and arms plenty. He had been fencing since age 9. Back home in San Francisco, three-time Olympian Greg Massialas had started a kids’ fencing program. Meinhardt’s parents signed him up. By the time he was a teen, he wanted to go to the Olympics. At 18, he did. 

At age 16, Meinhardt became the youngest men’s national foil champion when he won the 2007 U.S. Fencing National Championships. He was the youngest U.S. Olympic fencer of all time and the youngest fencer overall in Bejing.

After taking the gold at the 2012 U.S. National Championships, he was selected as an alternate fencer for the 2012 London Olympics.

Outside the sport, Meinhardt still liked playing basketball for variety. Since this risked injuries, that terrified his coaches. “When he sees a hoop, his eyes start twinkling, and it scares me to death,” Kvaratskhelia says. 

Meinhardt would also often do cardio exercise to get his heart rate up. His junior year, he was working out one day. Stumbling, he tore his meniscus. 

The star fencer had to use a motorized scooter, then crutches, around campus for weeks. O’Brien remembers what his roommate went through. Meinhardt had to watch their dorm room be rearranged for clearer pathways. He also had to strap a loud blood recirculation machine on his knee daily.

Since this was the dead of winter at Notre Dame, Meinhardt even had to be freed once when his scooter got stuck on ice. “We as friends all had to pitch in to help him out,” O’Brien says. “When a big lake effect snowstorm would come in and the sidewalks wouldn’t be adequately shoveled, it was very treacherous.” 

Meinhardt by nature is a humble guy—but this helplessness was humbling in the worst sense of the word. Yet as his coaches hoped, he fought through the pain and physical therapy to make the 2012 Olympic team. “I felt like Gerek’s destiny was not to get injured and stop his career,” Kvaratskhelia says. “I felt his destiny was to be the greatest.” Back onto the fencing strip he went.