Alex O'Connell (fencer)


Alexander O'Connell is a sabre fencer who, having won various national and Commonwealth awards, competed for Great Britain at the 2008 Olympic Games.

Sporting career

In 2005, O’Connell won the cadet world championship in Austria. In the following year, he was selected for the England under-20 Commonwealth team in India, where he won gold in the individual and team events. In 2007, he placed second at the Junior Men's Sabre World Cup in Göppingen, Germany. He has come in first, second, or third in numerous National and International Championships.
He competed for Great Britain at the 2008 Olympic Games, where he seeded 39th, and was eliminated by Nikolay Kovalev in the first round of competition, narrowly losing 15-14.
O'Connell was one of a group of four fencers who unsuccessfully appealed their rejection from the British team at the London 2012 Olympics.

Personal life

O'Connell grew up in Brentwood, Essex, with a brother three years older, and a sister four years younger; both siblings also fenced. His parents, of Irish descent, are a solicitor and property developer, and a part-time teacher.
Educated at Brentwood School in Essex and Churchill College, Cambridge, where he studied Classics, O'Connell is now a lawyer with Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer in London.
In 2017, O'Connell married author Ruth Gilligan in Ireland, after they met in college in 2008, and became engaged in 2016.