From Bethesda Magazine: A Potomac mom is a fencing world champion

Kristin Foellmer was an award-winning fencer in her youth as well

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April 1, 2026 3:00 p.m. | Updated: March 31, 2026 11:49 a.m.

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When Potomac resident Kristin Foellmer faced former Olympian Natalya Goncharova of Kazakhstan in a fencing world championship final in November, she was nervous at first. “But then I thought,Why am I nervous? I should just enjoy this wonderful experience and just let’s see what happens,” Foellmer says. “So I went on the offense, and when I didn’t feel a lot of pushback from her, I decided to keep pushing.”  

Foellmer, then 50, won the Vet 50 Women’s Epee category at the Veteran Fencing World Championships in Manama, Bahrain, competing against other women ages 50 to 59. Though it was her first time at the worlds for older fencers, she’s long been a standout fencer. She was the high school state champion for four years in Connecticut, a three-time NCAA All-American at Brandeis University (she graduated in three years) and was a member of the U.S. fencing team, representing the U.S. at world championships and on the Fencing World Cup circuit for many years. She competed in the foil category in high school and college, then switched to epee at the DC Fencers Club in Silver Spring soon after joining in 1997. In epee, “all of the complicated rules of foil go out the window … basically whoever hits first gets the touch” or point, she says. 

Foellmer took about 10 years off from fencing after her son, now 14, was born. She works as an interior designer and produces films for German public television (she was born in Germany), training at the fencing club a few mornings and evenings each week. 

Fencing makes her feel young, Foellmer says, and winning worlds “felt like a homecoming. All these years that I have invested in doing something that I just really love, it felt really wonderful.”

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DC Fencers Club has trained four other veteran world champions:

• Kaz Campe, Vet 60 Men’s Individual Epee, 1998 
• Lisa Dobloug, Vet 60 Women’s Individual Epee, 2005 
• Valerie Asher, Veteran Team Women’s Epee, 2022 
• Joe Deucher, Veteran Team Men’s Epee, 2023 

This appears in the March/April 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine