Yury Gelman

Yury Gelman (born October 13, 1955) is a Ukrainian-born American fencing coach. He is seven-time Olympic fencing coach for the United States, who has coached Team USA in the 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing, 2012 London, 2016 Rio, 2020 Tokyo, and 2024 Paris Olympics, and US National Men's Saber Coach. Through July 2024, he had coached 19 fencers who became Olympians, six of whom won Olympic medals. Gelman also served as coach of the Ukrainian Fencing Team from 1987 to 1991.

He has also served as Head Fencing Coach for St. John's University for three decades, during which time he has coached 26 NCAA individual champions, and 140 All-Americans. The team won the 2001 NCAA Fencing Championship. Gelman is the founder of the Manhattan Fencing Center in New York City and in Englewood, New Jersey.

Biography Ukraine Early years Gelman, who is Jewish, was born in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), to Wolf and Malvina Gelman.

He graduated in 1977 from Piddubny Olympic College (Kiev Ukrainian Academy of Sport), with a degree in physical education and coaching of fencing.

Gelman began teaching fencing to elite athletes in Ukraine. He first began coaching at Piddubny Olympic College after he graduated from the college, and he coached there from 1977 to 1991.

United States Early years Gelman immigrated to the United States on November 1, 1991, when he was 36 years of age, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through July 2024, he had coached 19 fencers who became Olympians, six of whom won Olympic medals.

He coached four of his proteges at the 2008 Beijing Olympics–Keeth Smart, Tim Morehouse, James Williams, and Jason Rogers, and they trained for the competition at his Manhattan Fencing Center. Gelman coached Team USA at the 2012 London Olympics, including his fencers Daryl Homer and Dagmara Wozniak–whom he had coached since she was nine years old, and who fenced at the Olympics with a partially torn right Achilles tendon.

In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Daryl Homer, whom he had coached since Homer was 11 years old when Gelman started coaching him pro bono, and then at St. John's, and finally in the Olympics, won an historic individual silver medal in men's sabre fencing. Homer became the first U.S. men's silver medalist since William Grebe in 1904. The U.S. Women's saber team (which included Dagmara Wozniak and Monica Aksamit) won a bronze medal in the women's saber team competition, coached by Gelman. Gelman's student Fares Ferjani won the silver medal in men's saber for Tunisia at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with Gelman coaching him. Also at the 2024 Paris Olympics, his fencers Elizabeth Tartakovsky and Maia Chamberlain competed for Team USA in women's saber. Her parents had emigrated from Kiev to the United States in the early 1990s. Gelman suggested that she try fencing, and she began training under him, and said: "Yury is the closest family we have in the U.S."

Philosophy

Gelman said, as to his philosophy: "Fencing is life, and life is fencing. All rules are the same. I teach people how to fence and how to live at the same time." Asked about his induction, he said: "I never pay attention to things like this. It’s not what I’m working for. It’s nice that it happened, but it doesn’t make a big difference."

In 2011 he received the U.S. Olympic Achievement Award from the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. National Governing Bodies for Sport, and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He said: "I want every child who studies with us to become a good member of society through fencing, enter a good university, and graduate from it. This is more important than if he becomes a great athlete; one in a million can become this, and everyone else should become just good people."