A 14-year-old from Brooklyn won a gold medal at the U.S. Fencing National Championships last weekend in Minnesota.  

Nazir Primus started fencing four years ago. When he first started, he says he never thought winning the US National Championship was possible.  

“I just started as just a casual thing,” said Primus. “But as I started doing it more I thought this could be something I'm good at and something I wanted to do.”

Primus would practice with his father on the streets of Brooklyn to improve his strategy and technique while working at the Peter Westbrook Foundation.

He says he made his biggest improvements during the pandemic while working with Aki Spencer-El, fencing coach at Columbia University and himself an Olympian and Daryl Homer, an Olympic silver medalist.  

Primus says that work made this championship win that much sweeter. 

“It just made me really happy, like getting a call from an Olympic silver medalist, telling me congrats,” said Primus. “I want to do the same thing as them, influence young black kids to get into fencing.”

Primus says he’s looking at the 2028 Olympic games in Los Angeles for his own Olympic dreams.