Four years after winning the silver medal in the men’s foil event at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, 25-year-old Egyptian fencer Alaaeldin Abouelkassem is in Rio de Janeiro heading his country’s fencing team at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games scheduled to take place there Aug. 5-21. The first Egyptian, Arab and African competitor to win an Olympic fencing medal, Abouelkassem is determined to repeat his earlier triumph, vowing to return home with another, "hopefully gold."
Despite suffering a shoulder injury, Abouelkassem captured the gold in the men’s individual and team foil events at the 11th African Games in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, in 2015 after having earlier won a bronze medal at the Mediterranean Games in Turkey in 2013. The left-handed foil fencer, seeded ninth globally, also clinched the silver at the men's foil Grand Prix earlier this year in Havana, Cuba.
