Sport: Fencing Inducted: 1993 Country: United States Born: February 12, 1921in New York, New
York Died: February 24, 2004
Albert Axelrod
is America’s most enduring fencing champion. Ranked
number one in the United States in 1955, 1958, 1960, and
1970, and number two nine times,
his bronze medal in Individual Foil competition at the 1960
Olympic Games was only the fourth Olympic fencing medal ever
won by an American.
Axelrod was a member of five consecutive
U.S. Olympic Teams—1952
through 1968—and was ranked in the U.S. Top Ten for
22 years, 1942 to 1970, missing three of those years in military
service. Five times his team won the National Foil Team Championship
(1940, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1958), and five times his team captured
the National Three-Weapon team crown (1949, 1952, 1954, 1962,
1963).
He was also a member of four United States World Championship
teams—best
finish fifth in 1958—and four U.S. Pan American Games
teams, winning three team gold medals and one silver medal,
and four silver medals in Individual Foil. In 1948, he was
U.S. Intercollegiate Foil Champion and led the City College
of New York (CCNY) to the National Team Foil Championship.
Axelrod competed in six World Maccabiah Games beginning in
1957, winning numerous gold and silver medals in both foil
and sabre competition.