The day of the ladies’s foil particular person gold medal bout, Lauren Scruggs spent an hour mendacity down in her room, occupied with what she was about to do and the highway to get there.
Going into the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games, the 21-year-old from Queens wasn’t projected to medal, not to mention compete for gold. However bout after bout, Scruggs battled her well beyond formidable opponents, together with number-one-ranked Arianna Errigo of Italy within the eighth spherical. On Sunday, July 28, Scruggs’s breakthrough run earned her a spot within the remaining towards American teammate and reigning Olympic champion Lee Kiefer.
Within the quiet moments of last-minute preparation, the first-time Olympian didn’t get slowed down by the strain and excessive stakes. As a substitute, as she tells SELF in a video name from Paris, she felt pleasure.
“Clearly I’d identified we’d made historical past being the primary two Individuals on a podium like that, so I needed to go on the market and have enjoyable and benefit from the full surroundings of being within the Grand Palais and fencing in entrance of America and the world,” Scruggs says.
Later that day inside the long-lasting 124-year-old fencing venue, Scruggs earned a silver medal to Kiefer, who received 15-6. That made Scruggs the primary Black American lady to earn a person Olympic fencing medal. 4 days later, the rising senior at Harvard stored the momentum going by serving to the US clinch the gold medal within the girls’s fencing crew foil competitors—the crew’s first-ever gold within the occasion. In line with OutSports, Scruggs’s {hardware} added to the present LGBTQ+ medal rely of 24 up to now in Paris.
A couple of days after the event, Scruggs says she was nonetheless in a little bit of shock. Within the span of every week, she rode the Crew USA boat into her first Opening Ceremonies, skilled surreal moments in Paris (together with an introduction with Snoop Canine), and made historical past within the sport whereas representing her nation. Trying again on all of it, Scruggs believes a low-pressure method, gratitude, and satisfaction—she entered the event already completely satisfied together with her efficiency within the months main as much as the Video games—helped her excel in methods she didn’t think about.
“I did not have any strain of ‘Oh, I want to do that or that,’ I simply needed to have enjoyable and benefit from the expertise,” she says. “The Olympics are likely to reward people who find themselves fighters. Each match, I used to be attempting to struggle, put all of my vitality into each bout, and I believe that’s what gave me the sting. I wasn’t nervous about technical issues. It was the vitality I used to be placing on the market.”
For Scruggs, a lot of her life had been constructing as much as this groundbreaking second. She obtained her begin within the sport on the age of seven. Impressed by her brother, Nolen, who picked up fencing after watching Star Wars, she shortly emerged as a world standout. In 2019, she grew to become the youngest US foil fencer to win the Junior World Fencing Championships. Final yr, she received the NCAA title for the Crimson.
