Paralympic fencer from Utah fights to stay in the Tokyo Games

Paralympic Wheelchair Fencing. Photo: clogsilk

TOKYO, Japan. — Shelby Jensen is fencing multiple national opponents in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games where the Utahn is finding mixed results. She competed in the individual sabre discipline yesterday and in the individual epee today.

Jensen’s results for the preliminary rounds for epee:

Loss to the athlete representing Ukrainian 0 – 5
Win over the athlete representing Poland 5 – 4
Loss to the athlete representing Hong Kong 2 – 5
Loss to the athlete representing China 0 – 5

In the Round of 16:

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Loss to the athlete representing Hungary 5 -15

She competes tomorrow in the Team Preliminary Pool for Epee, an event in which she took ninth place in the 2019 World Championships in South Korea.

Jensen said to the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWASF), “I was volunteering at a wheelchair sports camp when I was 15. One of the sports was wheelchair fencing. The foundation running the camp noticed my leg brace and said I had to come try it. A couple of months later I did and it didn’t take me long to realize that this was my sport. I am lucky that the Utah Fencing Foundation has made it easy for me to find and do something I love.”

Not all fencers contest all the disciplines like Jensen who does sabre, epee and foil. “Each weapon tends to attract a certain personality type so it’s more common to fence just one. Someone with the patience for epee where you look for tiny openings but have to still protect your entire body is less likely to fence sabre which often includes flying attacks. Still, some people master all three,” said Michael Greenfield, a Salt Lake City resident, and former Division three fencer for John Hopkins University.

Jensen represents the Valkyrie Fencing Club in Orem, UT and is engaged to Jarred Mitchell, a U.S. Army soldier. Her family is not in Japan to watch her as a result of strict COVID protocols disallowing all spectators.