Sabrina Massialas won Team USA’s first gold medal of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games with a dramatic golden-touch victory in the women’s foil final.
The 17-year-old outlasted Japan’s Karin Miyawaki, making her the second member of the Massialas family to win a Youth Olympic medal – her brother, Alex, won silver in men’s foil at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, according to Team USA.
After a slow start to the competition in Nanjing, Sabrina reversed her trajectory by taking to heart her father’s advice to refocus.
Schedule of NBC Olympics, Universal Sports coverage of Youth Olympics
“I dropped a few bouts, but afterwards my Dad sat me down and told me, ‘You have to fight, you have to be aggressive.’ And that’s exactly what I did,” she said, according to Team USA. “I played some pump-up music, I got myself in the zone and I just went all out, fighting with fire.”
The first silver of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games also went to an American 17-year-old triathlete Stephanie Jenks, who finished the sprint-distance course in 1 hour, 33 seconds. The race included a 750m swim, 20km bike and a 5km run.
“I’m really happy with it,” Jenks said, according to Team USA. “I went out and gave it my all. I raced with no regrets and I couldn’t have done any better.”
Australia’s Brittany Dutton bested Jenks with a time of 59:56 to win the first gold of the 2014 Youth Olympics.
Team USA’s medal haul on Day 1 of the Games was completed by 16-year-old Meghan Small, who swam her way to bronze in the 200m individual medley.
