Fencer Monica Aksamit gets candid about life as an Olympian on her new podcast
MATAWAN, N.J. (BVM) — Saber fencer Monica Aksamit earned a bronze medal with Team USA at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Now, she is training to qualify for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics while opening up about her life on her own podcast series, On the Fence with Monica Aksamit.
“I started the podcast since we’re not currently in full training and competing mode,” Aksamit said. “I truly hope me sharing my stories will help people.”
Aksamit started this project after the pandemic pushed the 2020 Olympic Games to now start in the summer of 2021. The debut episode for her weekly podcast on Spotify was launched on Nov. 24. Some of her special guests have been other Olympians and together they talk candidly about what they were going through while training for the previous and upcoming Olympics.
“Training and competing is a lot, and having to deal with personal issues on top of that makes it even harder,” Aksamit said. “In those situations, it’s better for me to push it to the side, to the best of my abilities, and then tackle that when the competition season ends.”
The podcast has also been an outlet for Aksamit to open up about how stressful life has been because of the delayed 2020 Games. She talks about not knowing if she can get to the place she was mentally back in January when she felt confident that she would qualify like so many other Olympians.
“I really try to avoid thinking about it and stressing [about my chances of qualifying now that training schedules are off],” Aksamit said. “I deal with my Olympic dreams internally, by myself, so having a following makes that a little bit more complicated.”
Aksamit is ranked No. 3 by USA Fencing on its list of most followed fencing athletes on Instagram with over 100,000 followers. She admitted that although she wants to be as open and honest in her podcast with her followers, she said that her mental health is important to her. In her series, she tries her best to tackle issues about the upcoming Olympics, including how unbalanced the training is because the pandemic is affecting some countries more than others.
“I have had moments of severe depression with all of my thoughts about that,” Aksamit said. “It’s better for my mental health to not think or discuss some topics like this in complete depth.”
Currently ranked in the U.S. for fencing at No. 10, Aksamit said that even with the uncertainty going on with the games — training to qualify is still a top priority for her. As she looks forward to the games, the podcast is meant to give people a look into what even someone in the Olympics can go through personally.
“I think people look at me as this superior being sometimes, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Aksamit said. “I’m just a regular human being that has ups and downs and similar situations to everyone else. The only difference is that I have an Olympic medal.”
Until the day comes when she has to temporarily drop projects like this to represent Team USA in Tokyo, if she qualifies, Aksamit said that she will continue to discuss what her listeners want to know. Her podcast’s topics have ranged from what happened in the Olympic Village in 2016 all the way to crying over job applications. She gets personal about people in her life and what she did in situations that could relate to anyone tuning in, not just Olympians.
“When I qualify, I have no intentions of stopping the podcast,” Aksamit said. “I always find ways to manage my busy schedule of content creation, modeling, refereeing, and training/competing. I enjoy being busy and don’t like sitting around bored.”
