SOREN THOMPSON DURING TEAM USA’S VISIT TO THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER THE 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES. THOMPSON PLACED SEVENTH AT THE 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES IN ATHENS. THOMPSON AND TEAMMATES ADAM WATSON, ALEXANDER TSINIS AND JASON PRYOR IN BUDAPEST. At the 2012 World Championships, Soren and his U.S. men’s epee teammates became the first Senior World Champions in the history of U.S. men’s fencing. In addition, Soren’s alma mater Princeton won the NCAA Team Fencing Championship this March. AF caught up with Soren before he headed off to a pre-World Championship training camp in Prague with the U.S. Men’s Epee Team. So how proud are you of your Princeton Tigers? Very proud! I’m so excited that they won their first NCAA national fencing championship since 1964. How was the fencing program back when you were in school? Princeton always had good fencers, but only recently have they had the depth to compete for a combined six-weapon title. I fenced under [Michael] Sebastiani who coached a number of individual NCAA Champions, including me in 2001. Over the last seven years, Zoltan [Dudas] has been doing a tremendous job, and it cul-minated with an NCAA School Championship. Hopefully the first of many! You actually have a distinction very few athletes are able to obtain. You have fenced in all of the major fencing tourna-ments in the world. Yes, I have fenced in Cadet Worlds, Junior Worlds, Senior Worlds, Pan American Games, University Games, Maccabiah Games and the Olympics. To me having one of the coveted po-sitions on those teams is a huge responsibility because you have to prove that you deserve to be there over all your teammates who tried so hard to qualify. Shouldering that responsibility by bringing results back to the United States is the biggest honor in sport. I suppose that being the World Champi-on team going into Budapest has some expectations. When you look at what we did in 2012, it was incredible! France was the goliath; they were World Champions for the last decade. Since ’03, they hadn’t lost a World Championship. They were considered unbeatable. It validates what we did as a team when we beat them. If they had lost earlier, people would have asked, “But what if the United States had to face France? Could they beat them?” We confirmed what we already knew: We were a world cham-pion team and we proved it against the best. What was also rewarding is our result at the first team tournament after the Olympics. Cody [Mattern], Seth [Kelsey] and Ben [Bratton], all stalwarts of the team, had either retired or were taking time off after the Olympics. As a result, we came in with three new members to Leg-nano, Italy. We showed the depth in the epee program when Jason [Pryor], Jimmy [Moody], Jonathan [Yergler] and I took silver at the event and retained our No. 1 team ranking. Did you bring your lucky tiger t-shirt or something like that with you? HA! No, just my normal things that I always bring with me that help me perform the best. What type of stuff? Well, I still use my Leon Paul uniform that the team had input in creating. It is still in pre-pro-duction phase, but they are looking at releasing it to the public soon. I also use specialized orthotics for my feet. My feet pronate so I had some orthotics made by an Israeli company called Tamir Kfir. They are amazing orthotics that tons of professional athletes are using. I can’t imagine going into a competition without them. Since 2004, I have also used a hydration drink called Vitalyte. I love their Cool Citrus flavor. Athletes have to realize that if you are dehydrated, there will be a decrease in sports performance. Any final words of wisdom? In late 2010 I started training to qualify for London 2012, even though I hadn’t been fenc-ing seriously for over almost three years. It felt like stepping into the void because I was ranked outside of the top 200 and had no idea if I could still compete with the best in the world. Nobody seemed to understand what I was trying to do with my fencing so I started coaching myself. I revamped my entire game. Within a year I was top 10 in the world and ultimately I qualified for the Olympics easily. At times it was scary but I would never have reached my goals if I hadn’t embraced the responsibility of analyzing, plan-ning and executing. Coaches, mentors, training partners and many others help us along the way, but ulti-mately our triumphs and failures are our own. So take ownership of your training! As an ath-lete, you need to constantly, tenaciously, proac-tively improve your game. Nobody can do that for you. I would be nowhere close to the fencer I am if I hadn’t done that. Well it looks like this tiger has some wisdom of a snake. n 26 AMERICAN FENCING B
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