The Harvard Crimson is the nickname of the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country. Like the other Ivy League colleges, Harvard does not offer athletic scholarships. Athletics at Harvard began in 1780 when the sophomores challenged the freshmen to a wrestling tournament with the losers buying dinner. Since its historic boat race against archrival Yale in 1852, Harvard has been in the forefront of American intercollegiate sports. Its football team conceived the modern version of the game and devised essentials ranging from the first concrete stadium to a scoreboard to uniform numbers to signals.
Vladimir Aliverovich Nazlymov is a former sabre fencer, and coach for the USSR and later the United States, to which he moved in 1991, of Crimean Tatar origin. He won three team Olympic sabre gold medals, and was the head coach of the Soviet Union Military Fencing Team for 14 years. He then coached in the United States, notably for Ohio State University, from which he retired in lieu of termination during an NCAA investigation that found him guilty of aggravated level I violations, sanctioned him, and vacated a number of records of the team and its members. He now serves as a coach at the Nazlymov Fencing Foundation, which was founded by his son and daughter-in-law.
Edoardo Mangiarotti was an Italian fencer. He won a total of 39 Olympic titles and World championships, more than any other fencer in the history of the sport. His Olympic medals include one individual gold, five team golds, five silver, and two bronze medals from 1936 to 1960.
Rebecca Ward is an American sabre fencer. She won the gold medal at the sabre 2006 World Fencing Championships after beating Mariel Zagunis 15–11 in the final, and took bronze in both individual and team sabre events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She also won the women's NCAA national individual sabre championship three times, the first in history to do so in sabre. In 2015, she was inducted into the USA Fencing Hall of Fame.
The Intercollegiate Fencing Association (IFA) was the oldest collegiate fencing conference in the United States. It was affiliated with the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
Byron Lester Krieger was an American foil, sabre and épée fencer. Krieger represented the United States in the Olympics in 1952 in Helsinki and 1956 in Melbourne, and in the 1951 Pan American Games where he won two gold medals.
Ferenc Marki was an internationally known fencing master and fencing coach.
Timothy Frank Morehouse is an American fencer who won a Silver Medal competing in the men's sabre as a member of the United States fencing team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Morehouse is coached by Yury Gelman. He is the founder of the Fencing in the Schools program.
Emily Ruth Cross is a U.S. foil fencer who was a member of the 2008 Olympics U.S. Women's foil team. She is best known for helping the team win the foil silver medal for the U.S. at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, along with teammates Erinn Smart and Hanna Thompson.
Daryl Homer is an American right-handed saber fencer, three-time Olympian, and 2016 individual Olympic silver medalist.
The Penn Quakers fencing team is the intercollegiate fencing team for the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The team competes in the Ivy League, within the NCAA Division I.
Noam Mills is an Israeli fencer, who competed in the individual women's épée event for Israel at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She is a three-time junior Israeli champion in épée, and a four-time senior Israeli champion.
Eli Dershwitz is an American left-handed saber fencer, five-time individual Pan American champion, two-time Olympian, and the 2023 saber World Champion.
Benjamin "Benji" Nathanial Ungar is a US Men's Épée fencer. He was the NCAA Men's Épée Champion in 2006, and was a member of the USA Men's Épée team that won the silver medal at the 2010 World Fencing Championships.
Eric Tennyson Sollee was an American fencer and fencing coach. He fenced at Harvard University, where he earned National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) All-America honors. He coached at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, and the Carroll Center for the Blind, among others. As a coach, he is notable for finding ways to quickly develop competitive fencers and for introducing a paradigm shift in how to fence against classical fencers. Sollee trained a number of top competitors, including Olympians.
Zoran R. Tulum is a fencer and fencing coach.
The Ukrainian Fencing Federation commonly known by the acronym NFFU, established in 1992, is the governing body of Ukrainian fencing. Through 2022, Ukrainian fencers won 230 medals combined in the Olympic Games, World championships, and European championships.
Lauren Scruggs is an American left-handed foil fencer. Scruggs won a silver medal in women's individual foil at the 2024 Summer Olympics, making her the first African American woman to win an individual fencing medal. She also won a gold medal in women's team foil at the same Olympics, along with Lee Kiefer, Jackie Dubrovich, and Maia Weintraub. Scruggs competes for the Harvard Crimson team in collegiate fencing. She has won an NCAA championship and is one of two black fencers from the United States to have won an individual world championship.
