Olympic champion and future doctor: Team USA’s reigning champion Lee Kiefer is en route to her fourth Olympic Games

Once she's wrapped her fourth Olympic Games, life will not get any less hectic for fencer Lee Kiefer -- even if she puts the foil down for good.

The Olympic women's foil champion from Tokyo 2020 has managed to combine training with her studies at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine.

A career as a doctor will eventually follow, but the 29-year-old is currently stepping up her preparations to defend her title at Paris 2024.

Kiefer and her husband, fellow Team USA fencer and Olympic medallist Gerek Meinhardt, are both taking a hiatus from medical school and competing at the 2023 Pan American Games.

They boast an impressive collective haul of 11 medals from previous Pan Ams with Kiefer seeking a fourth consecutive individual triumph in Santiago.

Lee Kiefer’s Olympic evolution as she prepares for her fourth Games

From her first Olympic Games the summer after her high school graduation to preparing to go to Paris as the reigning Olympic champion, Kiefer has gone through a world of an evolution.

At just 17, while still at high school, Kiefer won bronze at the 2011 World Championships weeks before taking double gold - team and individual - at her first Pan American Games.

Despite that, she laughs as she recalls her Olympic debut at London 2012, saying, "No one put any expectations on me; I was chilling."

In the British capital, Kiefer went out in the quarter-finals to Italy's eventual silver medalist Arianna Errigo.

But with more international success following at World Cup events, Rio 2016 was a different story.

Her Philippines-born mother Teresa Kiefer said, "Going in with a bit more pressure on her, she felt like she was kind of there for the wrong reasons."

Admitting now, "I put a lot of pressure on myself to medal [in Rio],” Kiefer crashed out in the round of 16 to Liu Yongshi of the People's Republic of China.

"It was just a shock, like to everyone,” her mother said.

For Kiefer, still only 22, there followed a change of mindset.

Her preparation for Tokyo was a whirlwind with COVID-19 forcing the postponement of the Games.

Kiefer struggled with rearranging medical school, her Olympic training plan and her life to account for time that was not in the initial plan, but, with hindsight, “fire” is the word she uses to describe her lead-up to Tokyo.

“Despite the pandemic, I enjoyed the whole experience and results showed for that,” she said.

Those results: An Olympic gold medal.

She compared the whirlwind of emotions that followed to the experience of a bride at her own wedding - she and Meinhardt married in September 2019 - saying, “I see pictures, but I was too heightened to remember it.”

Her celebrations after her victory over ROC's reigning Olympic champion Inna Deriglazova to take gold had to be curtailed somewhat with Meinhardt competing in the men's team foil just two days later.

After USA's men matched their Rio bronze, they were able to celebrate together properly for "a few months".

Then came moments of “panic” as the couple figured out what was next and how to adopt “meaning and structure and goals” following their Olympic successes.

Lee Kiefer - beyond the blade

Kiefer was born in Cleveland, Ohio but the family soon moved to Lexington, Kentucky.

Growing up as the second of three children, she watched - according to her mother - her older sister Alex do everything "perfectly" which kept Lee "fighting for her own spot".

She even followed Alex into collegiate fencing with big sister achieving All-Ivy first team and All-American second team selections while at Harvard.

The pair met at the NCAA Championships in Lee's freshman year with Alex - who later graduated in obstretrics and gynaecology - coming out on top.

But as Alex focused on her medical career, Lee - a lover of medicine and Crumbl Cookies - became her country's leading foil fencer with the two remaining very close.

As well as medicine and Crumbl Cookies, Kiefer loves to travel and enjoys taking time to explore after international tournaments - posting her trips around Italy, Greece, Hawaii, Peru, Egypt, Brazil on her Instagram.

Kiefer also has an eight-year-old pet tarantula, called Caetano.

“I wanted my pet to reflect my personality,” she giggled, saying she has always been a little bit creepy and weird.

In her time away from medical school, she stays involved with occasional research projects, as well as volunteering and learning mandarin online.

She also makes time in her schedule to stay close with family members, often calling and visiting her 94-year-old grandmother to brighten her day.

Teresa is clearly proud of her daughter with "a big heart", and says she sometimes thinks about what it means to have an Olympic champion in the family:

"Every so often I still have to really think about how big that is… to stop and just say, 'Wow, I can’t believe she did that.' And I have to give her a hug and a kiss.”

Mrs. Lee Kiefer

Unlike most sportspeople, Kiefer has a partner who is with her every step of the way.

She and Meinhardt started dating just before her Olympic debut in London and have been to three Games together.

At the end of the 2022-23 season in which they travelled around the world representing the United States, Kiefer was globally ranked number one with Meinhardt number two.

They remain each other's main training partners with Kiefer's mother saying they have "so much fun together" despite being intense and competitive, adding, "They care so much about each other and they really balance each other out.”

Should they make it, Paris will be Kiefer's fourth Games and Meinhardt's fifth.

So what then?

Kiefer said, "Most likely we will set down our foils, we’ll take a step back from fencing. But, life is also crazy. So I'm not locked in and I'm not going to beat myself up about changes.”