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Fencer Ward Seeks Gold Before Duke Enrollment
BEIJING (AP) - Getting lost helped land Rebecca Ward in the Olympics.
Ward, looking for a pool in a Denver recreation center, stumbled instead into a fencing class. Now she's a member of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team, ready to compete Saturday in the women's sabre event, one of the first of the Games.
"I guess the directions weren't that good," said USA Fencing team leader Bob Largman. "Lucky for us she wandered into fencing."
Ward, at 18 one of the youngest American Olympians, will be among the gold medal favorites when she begins competition Saturday, in the first fencing event on the first full day of competition in the Games. After that comes the team competition Aug. 14. Then Ward leaves China and reports for her freshman year at Duke, where she earned a fencing scholarship.
"It honestly hasn't really hit me that I'm here," Ward said Thursday. "It's really bizarre to me that I'm here."
Perhaps only as bizarre as how she began.
She was with her father, Bill, and older brother, William, looking for the pool when they walked in on a fencing class. Bill had taken fencing in college.
"He said, 'This would be cool, let's sign up.' " Ward said.
Ward, 9 at the time, was too young for the rec center class, so she found a club where she could compete. Her brother stuck with it only briefly, but Ward was hooked.
When the family later moved to Portland, Ore., a fencing hotbed, the sport factored into the decision. She joined the prestigious team at the Oregon Fencing Alliance.
It turned out to be a good one.
"She has been on a meteoric rise," Largman said."She's won every junior competition, No. 1 in the world as a junior.
"You don't want to jinx anybody, but she is certainly a favorite for a medal."
The women's sabre team, which also includes Sada Jacobson, Mariel Zagunis and Dagmara Wozniak, is also strong.
"They should be the favorite for the gold medal, if you can overcome the home-field advantage," Largman, a 1983 North Carolina graduate, said. "You can't overlook that."
So Ward could be a double Olympic gold medalist before attending her first class at Duke.
"While she knows expectation, and the pressure she has not shown it, which is phenomenal for someone in their first Olympics," Largman said.
"We have people here with three Olympics, and they have not handled it as well as she has. I don't know where she gets it from."
Although she has been home schooled since before she started fencing, she admits it was convenient with all the international travel.
"I didn't have all that with the instructors saying, 'your attendance is slipping,'" Ward said.
Once she gets to Duke, there will be no excuses. Not even that she got lost on her way.
FOUR FACTS ABOUT REBECCA WARD
- Her bio on the USOC website lists her unusual skill as being able to tie a knot with her feet. She says that was "a random fact discovered out of boredom."
- One factor that drew her to Duke was the kayaking club. Whitewater rafting is a family hobby, and she took a trip down the Rogue River in Oregon just before leaving for Beijing.
- She has competed in the North American Cup in Charlotte and Raleigh.
- Ward and team leader Bob Largman, a North Carolina grad, tease each other about the Duke-UNC rivalry. "As long as we win in basketball, she can say what she wants," Largman said.
