Daryl Homer is an American sabre fencer who competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Background
Daryl Homer was born on Saint Thomas, United States. Virgin Islands to Juliette Smith and Daryl Homer. At the age of 5, Homer moved to New York City alongside his mother and younger sister D.’Meca to an apartment on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx.
Education
While there, Homer attended Public School 21, transferred to Friends Seminary after receiving a scholarship and eventually graduated from Saint John's University with a degree in advertising communications.
Career
He is silver medallist at the 2015 World Fencing Championships and five-time gold medallist at the Pan American Fencing Championships. Homer started fencing at the age of eleven after happening on a picture of a masked fencer in the dictionary and finding it "very cool". He joined the Peter Westbrook Foundation in New York City, a program is dedicated to exposing inner city youth to fencing started by six-time Olympian and 1984 Olympic bronze medalist Peter Westbrook.
Homer chose sabre because Westbrook himself had been a sabrer.
Homer was quickly identified as a talented athlete and began working with four-time Olympic coach Yury Gelman immediately. That same year he competed in his first senior World Championships in Antalya, finishing 23rd, and took in first National Collegiate Athletic Association title as a sophomore.
At the 2010 World Championships in Paris he defeated successively France"s Boladé Apithy and Nicolas Lopez to reach the table of 16, and finished 12th. In the individual event he defeated 15–9 Romania"s Tiberiu Dolniceanu in the first round, then had a narrow 15–14 victory of world Number.2, Russia"s Aleksey Yakimenko.
He lost 15–14 in the quarter-finals to another Romanian, Rareș Dumitrescu, and finished sixth.
In the team event, the United States of America lost to Russia in the quarter-finals and finished eighth. He finished the 2011-2012 season no.12 in Foundation for International Education rankings. Homer maintained this ranking in the next season thanks to three quarter-finals placings in the World Cup and a bronze medal at the 2013 Pan American Championships.
He placed 11th at the end of the 2013-2014 season.
In the 2014-2015 season he climbed his first World Cup podium with a bronze medal in the Seoul Grand Prix.
Views
In the 2009-2010 season Homer defended successfully his National Collegiate Athletic Association title.
Membership
He redshirted the following season to train for the 2012 Summer Olympics, to which he qualified as a member of the top-ranked team of the Americas zone.