Packed inside a gym in Hartland, dozens of fencers stood ready with their fencing blades outstretched, attacking their opponents and defending themselves.
Every fencer is dressed in a multi-piece protective uniform made of thick white fabric with a black mesh mask.
But one athlete sticks out. Margherita Guzzi Vincenti’s mask is painted like the American flag. Team USA is printed on her pants and jacket.
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The Italian native is competing in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris for Team USA in both the individual and team epee events in fencing.
Vincenti ranked third in the Division I Parafencing National Championships in April, and in 2022 was on the senior world championship team. She describes herself as a well-rounded fencer, playing both strong offense and defense, whatever the moment calls for.
Vincenti competes with an epee, the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in the sport of fencing. The entire body is a valid target area.
One of her favorite moves is to reach behind her back and touch her opponent unexpectedly.
“I’m very fast. So I can control the blade with the strength of my arm,” Vincenti said. “But at the same time, I’m very quick and light on my feet that I can escape if you try to come at me or I can really jump at you and surprise you with a quick attack.”
Vincenti, age 33, has always been athletic. When she was growing up in Milan, Italy, she tried all kinds of sports. When she was seven, her father encouraged her to try fencing, since her great-great-uncle was an Olympic Fencer. Franco Riccardi earned three Olympic gold medals and one silver between 1928 and 1936.
Her dad told her, “You might like fencing, give it a stab, right?”
“Sure enough, I just fell in love with the sport and then the rest is history,” Vincenti said.
She rose up the ranks quickly and The Pennsylvania State University noticed, offering her a full scholarship to fence for their top-ranked team.
When she won the NCAA national championship as a freshman, she was invited to the White House where she met then-President Barack Obama.
“I had a chance to speak to him and then just inquired, ‘I would love to become an American citizen, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I would love if you became an American citizen too,’” Vincenti said.
She applied and was granted citizenship in 2019 through extraordinary ability for her fencing accomplishments. The process threw a wrench in her training and she fell just short of qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. Instead, she went as an alternate.
In Paris, she’ll be competing as a full-fledged member of Team USA.
“For me (it’s) more like we’re all going to the Olympics because everybody here in the club helped me get stronger helped me get better,” Vincenti said.
That includes Abbas Fadel. He has been coaching Vincenti for 10 years out of the Ataba Fencing Club in Hartland. She is the fourth Olympian he’s coached and the reason she moved to Wisconsin.
“She’s so nice and so polite but when she comes to fencing, she’s like a beast,” Fadel said.
Fadel noticed her potential as soon as they started working together. Her goal was to get to the Olympics and he helped her get there.
“I give her trust, she gives me trust and hopefully everything shows in the strip,” Fadel said.
Along with strength training and technique, mindfulness is a regular part of training for all 68 athletes he coaches. Vincenti said meditation exercises prepare her to be in the best psychological shape.
“It’s always about having the strength to bounce back from the mistakes that led you to the loss and learning from those mistakes, to really set yourself up for a better match down the road,” Vincenti said.
Although fencing is an individual sport, the athletes at the Hartland gym support each other. Against the back wall sat a sign that said, “Good Luck Margherita” written in red, white and blue colors with a picture of an epee.
“Wisconsin people are so genuinely kind and then you can just see all the love, the care and the happiness that comes from their hearts,” Vincenti said.
WPR is talking with Wisconsin’s athletes competing in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. Head to WPR’s special Olympic and Paralympic page to meet more of the competitors.
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