Nicolas Limbach

Biography

Limbach was born in a family closely involved in fencing: his father directs the fencing section of TSV Bayer Dormagen and his younger sister Anna also fences for Germany. He took up the sport at the age of six.

In 2005 Limbach won a gold medal in the individual and the team events of the Junior World Championships in Linz. The same year he climbed his first podium in the Fencing World Cup with a victory in Athens and he joined the national senior team. At the 2005 European Championships he reached the quarter-finals. At the 2007 World Fencing Championships, he won the bronze medal after losing to Italy's Aldo Montano.

A bronze medal in the Plovdiv World Cup allowed him to qualify to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In the individual event he defeated 15–7 Marcin Koniusz of Poland in the table of 32, then lost 14–15 to Aliaksandr Buikevich of Belarus.

He defeated Rareș Dumitrescu of Romania to win the 2009 World Championships in Antalya. He also won a silver medal at the 2010 and 2011 World Fencing Championships.

He won the World Cup 2009 and 2010. The TSV Bayer Dormagen athlete is only the second German to have ever won a gold medal with the sabre after Felix Becker in 1994.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics he reached the quarter finals in men's individual sabre. He was also on the German Men's Sabre team which finished fifth. He won the 2015 Seoul Grand Prix.