Homer Places Sixth In Men's Saber At Olympic Games

July 29, 2012

LONDON - In his first-ever Olympic event, Daryl Homer finished sixth, tying St. John's alum Keeth Smart's result in 2008. The sixth-place finish by both St. John's fencers is the highest by an American men's saber fencer since Peter Westbrook earned the bronze medal in the 1984 Games.

Homer, the youngest on the men's saber squad at 22-years-old, finished the highest of Team USA's men's saber team. Tim Morehouse, Homer's teammate, placed eighth. This marks the first time two individual American saber fencers qualified for the quarterfinals since the 1948 Games, which also took place in London.

Homer, who entered the day confident he would show a good result, was seeded 18th and received a first round bye. His first bout of the event was against Romania's Tiberiu Dolniceanu, who has history with Homer. Dolniceanu defeated Homer in the table of 64 at the 2011 World Fencing Championships in Catania, Italy last October.

In the round of 32, Homer and Dolniceanu matched each other touch for touch until the first break, which Homer entered with an 8-7 lead. Homer maintained the lead for the remainder of the match and defeated the Romanian, 15-11.

Homer's next test came when he faced the world's No. 2 saber fencer, Russia's Alexey Yakimenko. Homer, who had an 8-6 lead at the break, appeared headed toward a dominating upset victory when he jumped out to a 14-9 lead. Just one touch away from advancing to the quarterfinals, Homer ran into trouble when the No. 2 Yakimenko mounted a strong counterattack and collected five consecutive touches to tie the bout at 14-14.

With several American flags waving and the crowd stomping and cheering, Homer and Yakimenko fought for five more chances. All were ruled a "simultaneous attack" by the referees. Most of the chances were reviewed via video replay.

Each video replay resulted in a break, which allowed Homer the chance to strategize the ultimate defeat of the more experienced Yakimenko.

"I was trying to calculate the chances of `would he take a risk?'" Homer recalled. "The main thing is I wasn't sure if he'd be willing to take a risk and step out. But after we'd had simultaneous attacks four or five times, I thought I knew he was going to go now. My friend said before I came here that, if it was 14-14 and something crazy came into my head, that I should just do it - `No regrets.'"

U.S. saber coach Yury Gelman, also the head coach of the St. John's fencing team and Homer's trainer since age 11, had advice for him, too.

"Yury told me to keep the pressure on him, stay confident, and be sharp. He said not to watch because Yakimenko is amazing at his invitations."

After he collected the winning touch over Yakimenko, Homer and his long-time coach embraced.

Homer advanced to the quarterfinals and squared off with Romania's Rares Dumitrescu. Homer was behind, 8-5, at the break, but fought back to the bout at 12-12. However, Dumitrescu outmatched Homer for the remainder of the bout, defeating the 2011 Pan American gold medalist, 15-13.

Despite Dumitrescu being ranked eighth, six seeds lower than Yakimenko, Homer felt he did not match up as well with the Romanian as he did with the Russian.

"Yakimenko is a fencer who's more comfortable for me stylistically," Homer said. "He's going for more meditated actions and is fencing more off his tactics. Dumitrescu is more difficult for me. He's strong. He's huge. He's long. He's much more difficult but that's probably one of the best bouts I've ever had with him. He and Yakimenko are two of the top-four fencers in the world on any given day. Unfortunately, I had to run into the two of them back-to-back."

Homer hits the strip again on Friday, Aug. 3 for the men's team saber event. The U.S. men's saber squad snagged silver at the 2008 Olympics. They faces a tough first round matchup in a Russian squad which placed fourth at the 2008 Games in Beijing. At those Games, the U.S. topped Russia, 45-44, in a memorable semifinal match that sent the U.S. to the gold medal event.

"In my honest opinion," Homer said, "I think Russia came here today thinking they were going to walk all over us. We just proved to them that they're going to have to rewrite their plan in the next few days if they want to beat us. We have our plan and it was successful. We beat two of their fencers individually today.

"If we can execute in the team event, I'm very confident in how we'll do," Homer added.

The quarterfinal match against Russia begins at 6:30 a.m. The semifinals and finals will be streamed at 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., respectively. With a cable, satellite, or telco TV subscription that includes MSNBC and CNBC, viewers can also access live streams of every Olympic event on NBColympics.com.

For more on Homer's path to the 2012 Olympic Games, follow his official twitter account (@DarylHomerUSA) as well as the official St. John's fencing twitter account (@STJ_Fencing).

Shortcuts for watching NBColympic.com's replay of the men's individual event

Round of 32 bout vs. Romania's Tiberiu Dolniceanu
1:45:47 - Beginning of the bout
2:00:56 - Homer's winning touch and ensuing celebration

Round of 16 bout vs. Russia's Alexey Yakimenko
3:10:06 - Beginning of the bout
3:24:25 - Yakimenko ties the bout at 14-14
3:27:59 - Homer's winning touch and ensuing celebration

Round of 16 bout vs. Romania's Rares Dumitrescu
3:51:27 - Beginning of the bout

St. John's University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Daryl Homer

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