Peter Westbrook was the first African-American and Asian-American to medal in Olympic fencing, later launching a foundation to increase representation in the sport.
Peter Westbrook, a groundbreaking fencer who became the first African-American and Asian-American to win a medal in fencing at the 1984 Summer Olympics, died on Friday, November 29 in New York City. He was 72.
According to the New York Times, Westbrook died of complications from liver cancer following a two-year battle with the disease. His cause of death was confirmed to the Times by former Olympic teammate Robert Cottingham, who serves as chairman of the Peter Westbrook Foundation. The namesake organization was founded by the bronze-winning sabre fencer in 1991 to address “social, physical, academic, and health barriers by leveraging the unique sport of fencing to offer structured physical activity, academic support, and world-class coach-mentors to help underrepresented youth excel,” according to its website. Westbrook remained its chief executive officer until his death.
“Peter was not only the leader of this organization; he was the consummate embodiment of dedication to athletic excellence, civic engagement, and youth mentorship,” an announcement on the organization’s homepage read, in part. “[His] unyielding dedication to cultivating scholar-athletes was demonstrative of his life’s purpose.”
Peter Westbrook’s life began in St. Louis on April 16, 1952. Born to Mariko Wada-Westbrook and Ulysses Westbrook, who met in Japan while Mr. Westbrook served as a G.I. during the post-World War II Allied occupation and later divorced, Peter and his sister Vivian were raised in Newark, N.J. by their mother, who was reportedly discouraged from returning to her wealthy family in Japan with half-Black children.
It was also Westbrook’s mother who, wanting more discipline for her son amid the turbulent and tense racial dynamics of 1960s Newark, encouraged his early interest in fencing. Along with the popularity of the midcentury TV hero “Zorro,” she reportedly enticed him with the claim of samurai heritage in their bloodline. According to Westbrook lore, his mother even paid him a five-dollar-per-lesson “bribe” when he took up the sport as an adolescent.
“He was able to do battle and fight off some of his anxiety and win,” Westbrook’s widow, Susann Miles-Westbrook, told the Times in an interview following his death. “And in an environment that was racially charged, he found his niche.” Westbrook would chronicle his emotional and athletic journey in his 1997 autobiography, “Harnessing Anger: The Inner Discipline of Athletic Excellence.”
His mother Mariko’s tenacity paid off. After graduating from Essex Catholic High School in Newark, Westbrook attended New York University on a full fencing scholarship, graduating with a marketing degree in 1975. During his undergraduate years, he won the 1973 N.C.A.A. sabre title, going on to qualify for his first Olympics in 1976 while embarking on a career as a marketing executive.
After also qualifying for the 1980 Moscow Olympic team but not competing due to the United States-led boycott of the Games, Westbrook won the bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. In doing so, he became the first American fencer to win an Olympic medal in 24 years and the first African-American and first Asian-American fencer to ever medal in the sport, drawing comparisons to prior Olympic pioneers Arthur Ashe, Jesse Owens, and Wilma Rudolph.
“I would suggest there has not been another individual athlete, save perhaps for Arthur Ashe and Jackie Robinson, who has had the same impact at widening participation in a sport beyond its traditional roots,” Phil Andrews, chief executive of USA Fencing, told the Times in an interview on Saturday.
Nevertheless, as a person of color succeeding in the traditionally white sport of fencing, Westbrook was acutely aware of the bias that followed him as he broke barriers. “People would look at me and say, ‘He’s different, he’s special,’” Westbrook told The Times in a 2004 interview. “A lot of people even told me: ‘Pete, you’re not really Black, you know. You’re Japanese.’ That made me easier to swallow.”
Dynamics like these led Westbrook to organize and advocate for more representation in fencing, first forming a collective of Black and Latino fencers known as “the Brotherhood.” As Cottingham, who competed alongside Westbrook in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, told the Times, “He gave us a safe place to exist in an environment where it could have been very lonely at that time.”
During his competitive career, Westbrook qualified for every U.S. Olympics from 1976 through 1996. His final Olympic appearance was bittersweet at best, as it coincided with the manslaughter trial of the woman eventually convicted of beating his mother, Mariko, to death following a brief verbal exchange on a Newark bus.
“I would rather honor my mother by going to the Games,” said Westbrook, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (per the Spokesman-Review).
That same year, he was inducted into the USA Fencing Hall of Fame. In addition to competing in six Olympic Games, Westbrook also won 13 national championships, served on the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Board of Directors, and gave congressional testimony “on the value of sports in providing opportunities for personal growth, self-discipline, and accomplishments,” reports the Times.
However, Westbrook’s legacy might be best embodied by the athletes he cultivated. After first giving free fencing lessons to underserved youths in Manhattan, in 1991, he partnered with the Fencers Club of Manhattan to launch the Peter Westbrook Foundation, with reported encouragement from Arthur Ashe. The foundation’s mission is to introduce young people with potential, much like Westbrook once was, to the world of fencing, using it as a platform to build discipline, foster drive, and promote academic excellence. To date, the program has brought over 4,000 youths to the sport, producing sixteen Olympians (spanning every Olympic Games since 2000) and five medalists. Alums of the program include former Olympian Akhnaten Spencer-El, who has since become the first Black fencing coach of Team USA, and Paris Olympian Lauren Scruggs, who became the first Black American woman to win an individual medal in fencing in 2024 — exactly 40 years after Westbrook broke the color barrier in the Olympic sport.
“I just thought African Americans could take advantage of the sport, maybe get some scholarships, turn their lives around being around a lot of other positive African Americans,” Westbrook told the Times in 2004. “I didn’t think people would gravitate this much to what we do. I didn’t dream that literally we’d have the best team in the country.”
In addition to his wife, Susann Miles-Westbrook, Peter Westbrook is survived by his stepson, Dorian Miles Sr., his sister, Vivian Westbrook, and eight grandchildren.
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