CAIRO, Egypt – Stanford alum Alexander Massialas '16 won a gold medal at the Cairo Men's and Women's Foil World Cup last weekend.
Massialas edged Italy's Tommaso Marini in the final bout of the men's individual foil event, 15-14. In the semifinal round, Marini won against teammate Davide Filippi, 15-8, while Massialas defeated France's two-time world champion Enzo Lefort, 15-7. Massialas beat Italy's world champion Alessio Foconi in the quarterfinals, 15-13.
Massialas is ranked No. 2 in the world rankings behind Marini. In the women's epee world rankings, Stanford teammate Vivian Kong '16, nicknamed the "Queen of Swords" is ranked No. 3. She represents Hong Kong.
This is the second World Cup gold of the year for Massialas. He won the title in Paris on January 12 and has won five individual golds and 11 medals altogether in World Cup competition. He also won a World Championship individual silver in Moscow, Russia, in 2015, and an Olympic individual silver in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Massialas in 2016 became the first U.S. man to win two fencing medals in the same Olympic Games in more than a century, capturing silver as an individual and was part of a four-man foil team that won bronze and also won the 2019 World title together.
The San Francisco native earned his first Olympic berth in 2012 at age 18, making him the youngest male athlete on the U.S. Olympic team. He's since gone on to medal-winning performances at both the Olympic Games and world championships, as well as a standout career at Stanford, where he won two NCAA individual titles.
In 2013, Massialas anchored the U.S. squad to its first medal at the World Championships, a silver. Since then, the team has won two more world silver medals, plus a historic gold medal in 2019 — the first for the U.S. men's foil team. Massialas also claimed an individual world silver medal in 2015.
In Rio, Massialas reached the individual foil final and became the first U.S. man to win an individual foil medal since 1960. Then he joined with Gerek Meinhardt, Miles Chamley-Watson and Race Imboden to win the bronze, Team USA's first in men's team foil since 1932. The combined feats made Massialas the first U.S. men's fencer to win two medals at an Olympic Games since 1904.
In the Tokyo Games in 2021, Massialas earned a bronze in the men's team foil, for his third career Olympic medal. Massialas out-touched two Japanese opponents and tied another, and scored the winning point, in the third-place match to help the U.S. to a 45-31 victory.