Alexander James O'Connell (born 17 April 1988) is a sabre fencer who competed for Great Britain at the

2008 Olympic Games The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Na ...

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 competed for Great Britain at the

, where he seeded 39th, and was eliminated by Nikolay Kovalev in the first round of competition, narrowly losing 15-14. He was a three times British fencing champion, winning the sabre title at the British Fencing Championships in 2005, 2006 and 2010. 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 Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, where he studied Classics, O'Connell is now a lawyer with Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer in London. In 2017, O'Connell married author

Ruth Gilligan Ruth Gilligan (born 12 March 1988) is an Irish writer, journalist and university lecturer, born in Dublin. Early life Gilligan's father was an accountant and her mother a speech therapist. Her brother David is ten years her senior, and the famil ...

in Ireland, after they met in college in 2008, and became engaged in 2016.

References

External links

* * * * 1988 births Living people British male fencers Olympic fencers for Great Britain Fencers at the 2008 Summer Olympics {{UK-fencing-bio-stub