Plano native Jaelyn Liu makes history with Team USA fencing gold

Plano native Jaelyn Liu turned a trip to Rio de Janeiro into fencing history, winning Junior Women’s Foil gold on April 4 and Cadet Women’s Foil gold on April 5 for Team USA. The 2026 run made the Star Fencing Academy and Fencing Institute of Texas athlete the first fencer ever to win both Cadet and Junior gold at two different world championships, and it pushed her total to seven world championship titles.

Liu did not coast to the podium. In the Junior event, she rallied from a 10-8 deficit in the semifinal against Minchae Shin of Korea and held on for a 15-14 win before taking the final over Linlin Zhu of China, 15-4. A day later, she beat Yixin Zhang of China 15-8 in the Cadet final. USA Fencing said the Cadet title was her third individual Cadet gold, adding to two individual Junior golds, one Junior team gold and one Senior team gold.

Her rise has deep North Texas roots. USA Fencing lists her coaches as Kai Zhao, Tamer Tahoun, Shuang Meng, Volodymyr Yefimov and Mahmoud Hossam, a group that helped shape a teenager who started fencing at age 4 and, by age 9, chose the sport over ballet. Olympics.com said Liu grew up in the Dallas area before her family later moved to the Boston area, but her name remains tied to Plano and the Collin County sports scene that first watched her develop into an elite national prospect.

The Rio medals followed a senior-level breakthrough that widened her profile well beyond youth competition. In January 2025, USA Fencing said Liu won the women’s foil title at the Hong Kong World Cup, her first medal on the senior circuit, and the youngest U.S. women’s foil fencer ever to win a World Cup gold. That event included a Round of 32 victory over teammate Lee Kiefer, the two-time Olympic champion. A FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth segment aired April 27, 2026, showed Liu talking about what it felt like to be a world champion and how quickly her career has moved from local training to Team USA.

For Plano and the broader Collin County sports community, Liu’s surge offers a rare national spotlight for a sport that often sits outside the mainstream. It also fits a bigger American trend: USA Fencing said U.S. fencers have won nine of the last 12 Junior Women’s Foil world titles, including six of the last seven. Liu is now part of that streak, but her double gold and senior World Cup breakthrough suggest her name may stay in the record books long after Rio.