Keeth Smart, who is a sabre fencer, was born on July 29, 1978, in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He studied at the Brooklyn Technical High School, and later on, joined St. John’s University, where he stood as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sabre champion during 1997 and 1999. He works as a fulltime finance specialist at Verizon, New York.
His whole family evinced a keen interest in sports and his sister Erinnn is also a fencer of national level. Their father was involved in several Olympic Summer and Winter Games while working for Sports Illustrated. Their parents who were instrumental in their life and fencing career are no more.
In 1990, Keeth Smart enrolled in the fencing school in New York City founded by Peter Westbrook, a former Olympic medalist in fencing, and it was there that he got intensely involved in the game. He started as a foil fencer, but moved to sabre fencing after a few years. He soon began representing the country at the international level and was part of the bronze-medal winning team at the 1999 Pan American games.
Keeth Smart created waves in the sabre fencing arena by winning the United States (US) National Sabre Championship in 2002 and 2004. He was honored as the Athlete of the Month in June 2002 by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). In 2003, with his silver medal in the World Cup competition in Athens, Greece, Keeth Smart became the top-ranked male sabre fencer at the international level, the first-ever American fencer to do so.
After finishing outside the medals bracket in the last three Olympic Games, Keeth Smart finally made it to the podium at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won a silver medal. His performance was all the more remarkable because he had recovered only a few weeks before the Games from a rare blood disease that was expected to take his life within hours of the diagnosis. Having proved his mettle in the Olympic arena, he bid farewell to the world of sports.
Though he considers Peter Westbrook as his mentor, he also feels indebted to his coaches Aladar Koglar and Yuri Gelman, who taught him defensive and attacking styles of fencing respectively. In future, Keeth Smart plans to concentrate on his business degree at Columbia University.
