Britta Heidemann

At the age of 14, already being a successful athlete and swimmer, Britta Heidemann had her first contact with fencing in a variation of modern pentathlon called Friesenkampf. After first switching to modern pentathlon, at the end of 2000, she began to specialize in fencing.

In 2001, she became épée junior world vice-champion and junior European champion. In 2002, she reached third place in the World Fencing Championships, in 2003 second with the team. In 2004, she won third place with the team in the Fencing World Cup. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, she won the silver medal in the team with Claudia Bokel and Imke Duplitzer. In 2007, she became world champion in singles in Saint Petersburg and at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, she won the gold medal in the individual competitions. A year later, in 2009, Heidemann secured the European championship title, thus becoming the first épée fencer to hold all three major titles at once. In 2011, she became German épée champion. Heidemann progressed to the finals of the individual competition of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London (barely beating South Korea's Shin A-lam due to a clock malfunction) and eventually lost to Ukraine's Yana Shemyakina.