US women's foil squad takes gold in Paris Olympics

The United States has won women’s foil in the Paris Olympics, meaning that two of the Jewish fencers on the national squad are going home with gold medals.

Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub made up half of this year’s women’s foil squad, which defeated Italy 45-39 on Thursday to win the top slot. Weintraub, who deferred her last year at Princeton University to train for the Olympics, was the alternate but subbed in for Dubrovich briefly so that she would be eligible to share in the team medal.

Paris is Weintraub’s first Olympics. Dubrovich, who graduated from Columbia University where she studied Russian literature, is competing in her second games after narrowly missing a medal in team foil in Tokyo four years ago.

The other two fencers on the women’s foil team were Lee Kiefer and Lauren Scruggs, who competed against each other in the individual women’s final earlier this week.

Jewish athletes winning at Games

Weintraub and Dubrovich are among an outsized crop of Jewish fencers on the United States’ Paris team. Six of the 20 fencers on the team are Jewish; several were eliminated in upsets early in individual competition, but Nick Itkin, whose Jewish father opened a fencing school in Los Angeles after moving from Ukraine, won a bronze medal in foil earlier this week.

Also on Thursday, Israel took home its first medals of this Olympics, in men’s and women’s judo. Inbar Lanir won a silver and Peter Paltchik a bronze.