Team USA’s fencing squad is looking to South Euclid’s Jason Pryor to help capture its first Olympic medal in individual men’s epee since 1928. Here are three things to know about the 28-year-old, who at No. 24 is the highest-ranking American man in epee by the International Fencing Federation.
He started young. Pryor found fencing at 11 after a friend introduced him to a club that met in the Shaker Heights High School basement. “But I don’t think [fencing is] underground,” he says. “It’s a club sport. It’s definitely not immediately obvious unless you’re already sort of in the community.”
He’s got some fast feet. Pryor trained with two-time Olympian Seth Kelsey to improve his footwork. “If you dominate the footwork, then you can control a lot of the parameters of the bout,” Pryor says. “We’re going to move how I want, when I want and in the tempo that I want.”
He’s a writer. An Ohio State University graduate with a major in English, the TV junkie writes small screen scripts in his downtime and might use his Rio experience in a future teleplay. “The Olympic world is a very strange, very interesting and incredible world,” he says. “Oh, I would write the crap out of something like that.”