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Daryl Homer
Daryl Homer
Personal information
Born	July 16, 1990 (age 34); Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Nationality	American
Height	1.71 m (5 ft 7 in)
Weight	85 kg (187 lb)
Sport
Weapon	Sabre
Hand	right-handed
FIE ranking	current ranking
Medal record
Olympic Games
World Championships
Pan American Games
Pan American Championships

Daryl Homer (born July 16, 1990) is an American right-handed saber fencer, three-time Olympian, and 2016 individual Olympic silver medalist.^[1]

Homer competed in the 2012 London Olympic Games, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.^[2]

Homer is an eight-time team Pan American champion and three-time individual Pan American champion.

Personal life

Homer was born on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, to Juliette Smith and Daryl Homer.^[3] At the age of five, Homer moved to New York City with his mother and younger sister D’Meca, to an apartment on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. Homer attended Public School 21 there before going to Salesian High School^[4] in New Rochelle. He eventually graduated from St. John’s University, with a degree in advertising communications. He now works for advertising and marketing agency Anomaly.^[3]

Homer speaks to inner city youth about balancing his career with his athletic passions. He is a brand ambassador at Fencing in the Schools, a non-profit that aims to enrich the lives of students in the inner city through fencing. The program focuses on the health benefits, life skills, and exposure fencing can provide students in impoverished neighborhoods.^{[citation needed]}

Fencing career

Homer started fencing at the age of 11, after happening on a picture of a masked fencer in the dictionary, and finding it "very cool".^[5] He joined the Peter Westbrook Foundation in New York City, a program dedicated to exposing inner city youth to fencing started by six-time Olympian and 1984 Olympic bronze medalist Peter Westbrook.^[3] Homer chose saber because Westbrook himself had been a sabreur.^[5]

Homer was quickly identified as a talented athlete, and began working with four-time Olympic coach Yury Gelman immediately. He won a bronze medal at the 2007 Cadet World Fencing Championships, and another bronze at the 2009 Junior World Championships in Belfast. That same year he competed in his first senior World Championships in Antalya, finishing 23rd, and took the NCAA title as a sophomore.

In the 2009–10 season Homer defended successfully his NCAA title. At the 2010 World Championships in Paris he defeated successively France's Boladé Apithy and Nicolas Lopez to reach the round of 16, and finished 12th. The next season, he won the gold medal at the 2011 Pan American Championships.

He redshirted the following season to train for the 2012 Summer Olympics, for which he qualified as a member of the top-ranked team of the Americas zone. In the individual event he defeated 15–9 Romania's Tiberiu Dolniceanu in the first round, then had a narrow 15–14 victory of world No. 2, Russia's Aleksey Yakimenko. He lost 15–14 in the quarter-finals to another Romanian, Rareș Dumitrescu, and finished sixth.^[6] In the team event, the USA lost to Russia in the quarter-finals and finished eighth.^[6] He finished the 2011–12 season no. 12 in FIE rankings.

Homer maintained this ranking in the next season thanks to three quarter-final placings in the World Cup and a bronze medal at the 2013 Pan American Championships. He placed 11th at the end of the 2013–14 season. In the 2014–15 season he climbed his first World Cup podium with a bronze medal in the Seoul Grand Prix.^[7]

As of July 1, 2016, he was ranked #2 in the United States, behind Team USA teammate Eli Dershwitz.^[8]

He competed for the United States in fencing at the 2016 Summer Olympics.^[9] He won the silver medal.^[10] He became the first U.S. medalist in men's saber since Peter Westbrook won a bronze medal in 1984 and the first U.S. men's silver medalist since William Grebe in 1904. The U.S. has never won gold in men's saber.^[11] Shortly after his Olympic silver medal, he left long-time coach Yury Gelman and the Manhattan Fencing Center for another coach.

He qualified to represent the United States in fencing at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in 2021.

Medal record

Olympic Games

Year	Location	Event	Position
2016	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	Individual Men's Sabre	2nd^[12]

World Championship

Year	Location	Event	Position
2015	Moscow, Russia	Individual Men's Sabre	2nd^[13]

Pan American Championship

Date	Location	Event	Position
2010	San José, Costa Rica	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[14]
2011	Reno, Nevada	Individual Men's Sabre	1st^[15]
2011	Reno, Nevada	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[16]
2012	Cancún, Mexico	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[17]
2013	Cartagena, Colombia	Individual Men's Sabre	3rd^[18]
2014	San José, Costa Rica	Individual Men's Sabre	3rd^[19]
2015	Santiago, Chile	Individual Men's Sabre	2nd^[20]
2016	Panama City, Panama	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[21]
2017	Montreal, Canada	Individual Men's Sabre	1st^[22]
2017	Montreal, Canada	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[23]
2018	Havana, Cuba	Individual Men's Sabre	3rd^[24]
2018	Havana, Cuba	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[25]
2019	Toronto, Canada	Individual Men's Sabre	2nd^[26]
2019	Toronto, Canada	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[27]
2022	Asunción, Paraguay	Individual Men's Sabre	1st^[28]
2022	Asunción, Paraguay	Team Men's Sabre	1st^[29]