Tamir Bloom - Ivy@50

Penn graduate Tamir Bloom's fencing career ended in the second round of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. It had been a tough road to get to these, his second Olympics, and he felt good about his result, though he would have preferred a better finish.

Bloom had taken a year off from Mount Sinai Medical School, where he was preparing for a residency in orthopedic surgery, to train for the Olympics. Then in an ironic twist, he had become an orthopedic patient himself when he injured his right knee playing basketball. Bloom looks at it philosophically now, saying "some people get injured and then decide to go into orthopedics. I chose orthopedics and then got injured."

The decision facing him was not philosophical at the time. Knee surgery would have caused him to miss the Olympics, so he chose an intense physical therapy that kept his Olympic dreams alive. He found himself sponsored by the company that manufactured his knee brace, about which he had mixed feelings. "I hated that brace," he says.

To make the U.S. Olympic team a fencer must finish in the top eight at the world championships, be in the top 16 in world standings, or finish in the top two in one's geographical zone. Bloom missed the world championships, so his only chance was by finishing in the top two in geographical zone. He thus had to finish first in the U.S., and in the top two in the zone championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In ever competition he had to be the top American, or his Olympic dream was over. Constantly facing elimination, fighting his unstable knee all the way, Bloom was happy to be able to end his career at the Olympics, the pinnacle of his sport. The experience taught him "psychologically how important the mental aspect of sport is."

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