American foil fencer Nick Itkin has won medals at just about every major fencing tournament possible. His medal cabinet holds prizes from the Olympic Games, the World Championships, the Pan American Fencing Championships, the US National Championships, the Junior World Championships, and the NCAA Fencing Championships. He has been ranked by the FIE as one of the top 10 senior male fencers in the world every season since 2018/19. Not bad for someone who is still only in their early twenties!

Itkin was born to athletic parents — his father is his fencing coach and his mother is a gymnast — in Los Angeles in October 1999. When he was four, his father founded the Los Angeles International Fencing Center, which is where Itkin Junior trains today. His breakthrough year unquestionably came in 2018 when he won individual gold medals at the NCAA Fencing Championships (representing the University of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish), the US National Championships, and the Junior World Championships. He successfully defended his NCAA title the following year. These successes took him into the top 10 of the FIE world rankings, the youngest fencer there.

Itkin’s Olympic debut came at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo (held, confusingly, in 2021). He helped Team USA to win the team bronze. The following year (2022), he won individual bronze and team silver at the World Championships in Cairo. Such successes against competitors with far more experience can only bode well for the rest of this remarkable fencer’s career.