Olympian Omar Elgeziry joins the Cornell fencing program as an assistant coach for the 2018-19 season. He replaces Nicole Ross as she takes a leave of absence in order to prepare for qualification to the 2020 US Olympic Team.
In his first season, Elgeziry helped freshman Megan Eno became just the fourth fencer in Big Red history to earn first-team All-Ivy honors when she placed third overall in the epee competition at the 2019 Ivy League Fencing Round-Robin. Eno went on to win silver at the Northeast Regional, and captured honorable mention All-America honors with a ninth place finish at the NCAA tournament.
Elgeziry came to East Hill following three seasons as an assistant coach at Air Force, where he helped train 11 student-athletes into qualifying positions for the NCAA Tournament. During that time, he spent one year as the national epee coach for USA Pentathlon, after serving as an assistant coach and administrator for the Egypt Modern Pentathlon Olympic team from 2014-17. Elgeziry went on to make history as the first Olympic coach to qualify for the same Olympic Games as their athlete, as he finished 23rd overall with 1,403 points.
A world-class athlete, Elgeziry has competed in and medaled in more than 50 modern pentathlon and fencing events, including a silver medal at the 2016 Pentathlon World Cup #2 in Rio De Janeiro and a fourth place finish at the 2016 Pentathlon World Championships in Moscow.
As a fencer, Elgeziry is a two-time senior Egyptian champion in epee (2010, 2011). He also won a gold medal in epee at the Junior World Cup in Egypt in 2005, after a fifth-place finish the previous year.
A native of Cairo, Egypt, Elgeziry began coaching shortly after arriving in the United States, acting as a private fencing coach in Florida and founding the Sunshine Region Modern Pentathlon Club.
Elgeziry obtained a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Ain Shams University in 2008.
