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EXCLUSIVE: The former head coach of the American team of the United States, Andrey Geva, has filed a complaint against the President of Escares of the United States, Damien Lehfeldt, alleging that Lehfeldt made “false and deceptive” statements at the congress at a May 7 audience on trans athletes.
GEVA, a member of the United States board of directors, filed the trial alongside his colleagues and former Egyptian Olympian Abdel Salem, against Lehfeldt and the other five members of the director of the place. The trial is trying to have Lehfeldt withdraw as president.
Geva developed these alleged false comments that he claims that Lehfeldt made in an exclusive interview with PK Press Club Digital.
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The members of the United States women’s female team No. Six, from left to right, Kelley Hurley, Courley Hurley, Katharine Holmes, Katarzyne Trzopek and coach Andrey Geva, pose for a group photo during the female competition of the female Epee at Pan-American Fencing Championships in the city of Panama. (Guess Manky / Getty Images)
Geva underlined a declaration from Lehfeldt, when the president said: “Women more often have other advantageous features such as flexibility and agility. In the end, fencing is a strategy and technique sport. The women beat. “”
As a former coach of Olympic fencing, Geva thinks that this declaration is false. Geva was head coach of the United States team and director general of 2013-21, leading the team through the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. The United States won six Olympic medals under the direction of Geva, including gold in the individual female flower in Tokyo.
“This is simply not true, and that is what I told him several times, that I have an expertise as a person who has managed to train male and female titles at the highest international level,” said Geva, later referring to the way he trained his own male and female students.
“I trained them differently. I have a different approach to male and female titles because they are different.”
Geva also argued that Lefheldt had made a “misleading” statement when the president referred to “the mixed sex competition where men and women have safely and quite competed against each other for decades”, because mixed sex competitions are rare at the national level.
“This is a misleading statement. Yes, in training, men and women end each other, no problem. The local tournament, uninated, and not sanctioned tournaments will sometimes have mixed events. Sometimes, when a female competition has not competition, we will have mixed events,” said Geva.
“However, there is no mixed event at the national level.”
Who is Stephanie Turner? Fencer of women who knelt to protest against the trans adversary and inflamed the global consciousness
USA Fencing has official national events for male and women categories. The organization sanctions mixed events at the local level, according to the official policy page.
USA Fencing responded to the Geva trial in a statement provided to PK Press Club Digital, but the organization refused to respond to its recent comments.
“USA Fencing proudly serves its members – athletes, coaches, referees and clubs – in our community with absolute transparency and integrity. This derivative trial distorts our organization, and we will vigorously defend the organization in court; any attempt to denigrate them will be approached in an appropriate manner,” vigorously said the press release.
“Because the disputes are underway, we cannot discuss the details. Our goal remains unshakable: to advance fencing on a national scale, to support the success of each member and maintain the values of the Olympic and Paralympic movement.”
The trial claims that Lehfeldt’s statements at the May 7 hearing are now risking that the organization be declassified as a national director and “alienated thousands of members of the closing community which provided more than 90% of USFA income”.
Geva told PK Press Club Digital that he had communicated with several private clubs associated with American fences which left the organization in response to its current transgender readability policy which allows biological men to compete in female competitions and has moved to the amateur Athletic Union (AAU) League of Fencing League of America.
“Due to fencing policies in the United States, some of the clubs are leaving for small clubs, they have left the membership of fencing in the United States and they moved to AAU,” said Geva, adding that clubs have also resigned for other reasons. “I know a lot of clubs that leave membership of American fences.”
Geva refused to appoint the clubs which, according to him, had arrested. An anonymous source in the organization of American fences arose that the organization has experienced record growth in the past year.
“The season which ends next month (2024-25) is a record year for American fences with more than 43,000 members and nearly 750 clubs – the two records.
Geva also said that the organization increased, but “for different reasons”.
“Overall, our federation is increasing, but it is above all due to, like any organization, it is natural growth. It is very difficult to judge whether it is developing because we are doing an excellent job, or simply because more and more people discover that fencing is the niche and the means of going to university,” said Geva.
The organization was under a huge national examination following a viral incident when the female female Stephanie Turner kneel to protest against a transgender opponent and was then punished by an American fence.
Lefheldt’s testimony at the May 7 hearing only intensified criticism.
Lehfeldt, who was assigned to appear and did not voluntarily come, raised the controversy before the hearing with a series of Instagram stories which were then exploded and used against him upstairs of the Committee. In a post, which became viral before the hearing, he answered a question that asked him if he was “agree” to put the disadvantaged fertiles with a simple and impertinement: “yeah”.
Then, during the hearing, Lehfeldt admitted several times that he had regretted answering this way and admitted that the question required a “more nuanced” answer.
Kelley Hurley talks about coach Andrey Geva while she beat Erika Kirpu in the 32 individual female table in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic matches in Makuhari Messe Hall B. (Yukihito taguchi-Usa today network)
At a time of the hearing, Lefheldt admitted to having falsified an email from a fictitious closing mother, “Dorothy”, who did not agree with him and called these members with similar views of “Dorothy” “Grand Wizard” of Ku Klux Klan.
Lehfeldt said the post “was a bad attempted humor.”
Geva thinks that the position should be sufficient to cause the resignation of Lehfeldt.
“It is more than sufficient, any decent person in my opinion, after this fiasco at this hearing of the congress, should resign,” said Geva. “I believe that under his direction, our federation goes in the wrong direction.”
