Yuval Freilich

Yuval Shalom Freilich (Hebrew: יובל פרייליך; born 24 January 1995) is an Israeli left-handed épée fencer, ranked 9th in the world in 2023-24. In both 2014 and 2015 Freilich won the European Men's Épée Junior Championship. He won the individual épée gold medal at the 2019 European Fencing Championships, the épée team silver medal with Israel at the 2022 European Fencing Championships, and the gold medal at the 2024 Epee Grand Prix event in Qatar.

Freilich represented Israel at the 2024 Paris Olympics in men's épée, and came in 19th.

Freilich was born in Israel and is an Orthodox Jew, and grew up in a religious observant Jewish family. The family lived in Gush Etzion in the settlement of Neve Daniel, south of Jerusalem, and in the moshav Havatzelet HaSharon in central Israel. His parents Gabby (a radiologist) and Rachel Freilich had emigrated to Israel from Sydney, Australia, and he has three brothers and two sisters; he is the second-youngest of the six siblings. He grew up loving dancing, and especially tap dancing. He is the nephew of former Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia president Rabbi Dovid Freilich.

In 2000, when Freilich was a child, his family moved to Australia, where he lived for five years and attended Moriah College primary school, but then settled to Israel in 2004 and later attended Hartman High School in Jerusalem. He served as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, and trained at the Wingate Institute. He found that, as an athlete, his three years of compulsory military service slowed his progress in fencing because it limited his time considerably, and took a "mental and energetic toll." He later attended Open University of Israel in Netanya, Israel, studying Law, and IDC Herzliya (now known as Reichman University), where he double majored in Law and Government and was later inducted into the Reichman University Sports Hall of Fame.

Freilich began fencing at the age of eight. He became interested in fencing after seeing it in the 2000 OIympics. His coach starting in 2009 was Ohad Balva, he was laterd coached by Alexander Ivanov, and he is now coached by Angelo Mazzoni), and his club is Hapoel Kfar Saba. In a typical week, he has four or five lessons with a coach, three fitness sessions, and three or four fencing training sessions of up to an hour and a half.

In April 2010, at 15 years of age and younger than many of his opponents, he won a bronze medal in the men's épée 2010 World Cadet Fencing Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 2010 he was named one of the Top 10 U-20 Israeli Athletes, by Israeli news website Ynet.

In 2011 he won the European Cadet Championship, in Klagenfurt, Austria. In 2011-12, he was ranked 2nd in the world among junior epee fencers.

In 2012 at 17 years of age Freilich won the men's épée 2012 World Cadet Fencing Championship in Moscow, Russia, and became the #1-ranked épée cadet in the world. Also that year, in Croatia, he led the Israeli team to a gold medal in the European Team Championships. In March 2012, he won a bronze medal in the junior championship of Europe, in Poreč, Croatia. In addition, in December 2012 he won a bronze medal in the junior epee Young Lions World Cup in Espoo, Finland, behind Sergey Bida and Lorenzo Buzzi, in a competition with 170 fencers.