The most important second of Daryl Homer’s life won him an Olympic medal

The biggest point of Daryl Homer’s life lasted under a second. The score was tied 14-14, and fencing is first to 15, no win-by-two. The winner of this point would win this semifinal, and the winner of this semifinal would automatically clinch at least a silver medal. The loser likely would end up in fourth place which, emotionally, might be worse than finishing dead last.

With that all-important second coming up, Homer took an extra moment to think about how to win.

“I stopped the bout a little bit. I took a little bit longer to get en garde,” Homer says. “I’m like, he might cut a different place. He might not. But you’re going for it. You have to lose on your own sword. You can’t fall down. I didn’t want to lose on something he initiated. I wanted to lose on something I believed would work.”

When the referee gave the signal to go, both Homer and his opponent, Iran’s Mojtaba Abedini, lunged toward each other, Homer beginning his attack maybe an instant before Abedini. Homer’s saber hit Abedini, and two frames of video from my iPhone (about .06 seconds) later, Abedini’s saber hits Homer. It’s too late, eons too late. Homer rips his mask off and jumps up with his arms in the air, Abedini sulks away.

In that instant, Homer became the first American man to win saber silver in an Olympics since 1904. Homer’s mentor, Peter Westbrook, won bronze in the 1984 games, which were boycotted by the dominant Russians, but other than that, no American man had medaled since the 1904 Olympiad in St. Louis. No American man has ever won a fencing gold. Defending Olympic champion Aron Szilagyi won his second straight title in the gold medal bout. But fencing history had been made.

In May, Homer’s longtime fencing roommate, Jeff Spear, told me Homer would win this point.

“There was a season he had 10 bouts that came down to sudden death, and he won like nine of them,” Spear said. “He was the one who had this feeling. I’m going to go and execute, he executes it, and more often then not, he’s going to win that even though it’s a scary thing to do. He has the guts and the mental fortitude to act.”

He won on 14-14 at last year’s World Championships in Moscow, executing a leaping swipe that made him the first American man to win a saber medal at a world championship. But I still wasn’t sure I believed Spear. I found it hard to believe that it was Homer’s “guts” winning those points, and not his fencing technique and talent.

I should have known better than to not believe in Daryl. I’ve known Daryl since we were in middle school together, and back then, I didn’t believe in him at all. He used to brag about everything, including a lot of things he wasn’t that good at. When he said he was good at fencing, I thought it he was just overselling himself again.

But as I wrote before the Olympics started, that confidence has helped make Daryl into an elite athlete. That confidence I’ve seen in Daryl since he was a kid is why he won that point. He knew he had the hand speed and foot speed to beat one of the world’s best fencers in a battle of milliseconds.

But something weird happened this year. Daryl stopped believing in himself a little bit. After finishing second in last year’s world championships in Moscow, making him the first American man ever to win a saber medal at a world championships, Homer tried tinkering with his game.

It didn’t work. He lost in the Round of 64 in five out of six events, losing in the round of 32 in the sixth. He’d gone from one of the world’s elite fencers to somebody who could barely make it out of the first round of tournaments.

But when I asked him about those other tournaments in May, he knew the Olympics would be different.

“The beauty and the curse of combat sports is your ranking doesn’t matter. That it’s just who shows up on that day,” Homer said. “You can win every tournament for the last four years and if you don’t win in Rio nobody cares.”

Homer was supposed to face Alexey Yakimenko, the world’s top-ranked fencer, in the quarterfinals. Yakimenko beat him last year in the finals of the world championship, preventing Homer from getting gold, and could’ve kept Homer out of the medal round entirely. But Yakimenko lost an absolute stunner to the 302nd-ranked fencer in the world, Bulgaria’s Pancho Paskov, in the first round.

But fencing on the world’s biggest stage was no problem for Homer.

“I’m an all-or-nothing dude,” Homer said. “That’s what all the other guys are saying. They’re like ‘this guy always shows up when it counts.’”

My favorite quote from Daryl is about what it’s like to win a point at the Olympics.

“Everybody has trained their whole lives for the Olympics,” Homer says. “Every touch, every movement has an extra meaning to it. You can feel your opponent’s soul kinda leaving when your sword touches. It’s that slow, whooosh.” He pauses, simulating the opponent’s soul leaving. He smiles. “You can feel it.”

The biggest point of Daryl Homer’s life lasted under a second, but the result will last forever. He is no longer just a guy who is really good at fencing. He’s an Olympic silver medalist, and he always will be.