From Tattoos to Tinder Ads, Miles Chamley-Watson Is Bringing the Flair to Fencing

Miles Chamley-Watson doesn’t quite roll like other athletes in fencing, his relatively low-wattage Olympic sport. The American medal hopeful at the Paris Olympics, for example, returned home for a week in May from a competition in Shanghai—Team USA won gold in the team foil event—before jetting off to Monaco watch one of his best friends, fellow globe-trotting sportsman Lewis Hamilton, race in Formula One’s crown-jewel event, the Monaco Grand Prix. He bounced back to the U.S. to tune up for the Olympics, before jaunting off to Paris in late June to participate in Vogue World, a one-day fashion celebration at the Place Vendôme that also featured the likes of Bad Bunny, Gigi Hadid, and Serena and Venus Williams. 

From Paris, Chamley-Watson, 34, took a fight to Peru, where his U.S. team again took first place in foil. “I don't tell all my teammates all the stuff I do because it's just kind of unrelatable,” Chamley-Watson says. “I don't wanna seem like an a–hole.” 

Most fencers, particularly in the U.S. where the government doesn’t subsidize the sport, struggle to make a living pursuing their passion. But Chamley-Watson, who stands 6 ft., 4 in., is covered in tattoos, and has worked as a fashion model to supplement his income, has delivered a rare dash of celebrity flair to his sport. He has attracted a slew of top-tier sponsors like Nike, Red Bull, Richard Mille, Mercedes, and AirBnB. He just signed on with Tinder. “As tattoos are my thing, as you can see,” he said in a cheeky spot for the dating app in which he shows off his body art, “I might be down to get a matching one. Who knows?”

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He has more than 421,000 followers on Instagram. By comparison American Lee Kiefer, an Olympic fencing gold medalist from Tokyo, has some 49,000 followers; her husband Gerek Meinhardt, a two-time U.S. Olympic fencing medalist, claims about 32,000. Chamley-Watson’s Instagram handle is @fencer. “I like it,” he says, “because people are like, ‘When you think of the sport, you always think of Miles.’”

Chamley-Watson, the first American man to win an individual fencing gold medal at a world championship—he accomplished that feat in 2013— first picked up a sword as punishment. He moved to New York City from London with his mother and stepfather when he was around 10 years old, and after misbehaving in class, his mom made him take up a sport—fencing, tennis, or badminton—after school as an outlet for his excess energy. “Immediately I fell in love with it, because you put the mask on, you put the foil in your hand, you kind of feel like a little superhero,” says Chamley-Watson.

“Fencing is so much like chess and boxing, where you have to react but also think ahead,” he says. “It's just such a beautiful kind of synchronized dance.”

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He says after starting fencing, he had a “Bruce Wayne-to-Batman” moment on the New York City subway, when the quick reflexes he learned in the sport helped him knock the knife out of a mugger’s hand and toss it out of the train. (He’s coming out with a comic book after the Olympics recounting the incident.) The moment made him more fired up to duel. “There's nothing more exciting than waking up and getting to do what you love,” he says.   

Chamley-Watson made his first Olympics in London, in 2012, and won a bronze medal in team foil at the Rio Games. (In foil, the valid target area includes only the torso and the groin, and a hit can be made only with the point of the sword; in sabre fencing, a hit can be made with the cutting edge as well and the target area consists of everything above the waist, including the head and both arms. In épée, the target area is the entire body, head to toe, including any clothing and equipment.) Chamley-Watson missed Tokyo due to injury.

Chamley-Watson is aiming to change perceptions about his sport. “When you think of fencing, it still has a stigma of being uppity, elitist, hard-to-get-into predominantly white sport, right?” he says. Fencing’s popularity has increased in recent years: USA Fencing, for example, has added more than 10,000 youth members since the 2016-2017 season — a 68% increase. “I have grown the sport and given it a new set of eyes that they have never had before,” he says. “I won’t stop until my sport is mainstream.”

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Like Simone Biles in gymnastics, Chamley-Watson is the rare Olympian with a move named after him: he trademarked a technique in which he wraps his arm around his head and strikes his opponent in the middle of his chest. He says opponents often try the Chamley-Watson on him, to no avail. “They never hit it on me,” he says.

The individual men’s foil competition takes place on July 29, at the Grand Palais in Paris; Chamley-Watson is competing in team foil on August 4. “You're going to see an unconventional style that will draw you in,” he says. “The way I fence, my charisma, the way my energy is, I think you're going to love it, and you're going to see something you've never seen before, that's for sure.”

Is he going to win? 

“There’s no other option, my man.”