Albert Van Zo Post, move over.

Mariel Zagunis ended the USA’s 100-year gold-medal drought in fencing yesterday by winning the women’s individual sabre event. She follows in the obscure footsteps of Van Zo Post, who won a pair of gold medals at the 1904 St. Louis Games in single sticks (which is no longer contested, much less understood) and in the team foil event (alongside a pair of Cubans).

Zagunis was not only a long shot for a medal at Athens, she didn’t even make the cut when the U.S. team was selected in April. Zagunis given an Olympic berth only when Nigeria opted out of the event in June.

This year marks the Olympic debut of women’s individual sabre. Coming in, America’s medal hopes rested on Sada Jacobson, who had become the first American woman to rank no.1 in the world in any weapon. Sada’s younger sister, Emily, was also on the team and the two were preparing for a showdown in the Athens quarterfinals.

But in the round of 16, Emily lost to Leonore Perrus of France, 15-13. Sada avenged her little sister’s defeat by dispatching Perrus in the quarterfinals, 15-11. Zagunis remained undefeated on the other half of the draw, and with two Americans in the semifinals, the U.S. was guaranteed its first fencing medal in 20 years.

If both women could win their semifinals, the prospect of a Jacobson-Zagunis final appeared to be doubly tantalizing, for it would have been a rematch of the bout that had initially prevented Zagunis from making the Olympic team.

But Jacobson was overmatched in her semifinal match, and lost to the 2002 world cham pion Tan Xue of China, 15-12. After a short break, she won the bronze-medal match against Catalina Gheorghitoaia of Romania, 15-7, to become the first American fencer to win an Olympic medal since Peter Westbrook captured bronze in men’s sabre in 1984.

She would soon be upstaged, however. In the gold medal match, Zagunis, 19, needed only two rounds to defeat Tan, 15-9. Zagunis controlled the match from the first touch. She took a 7-2 lead after backing Tan to the end of the strip. At the end of Round 1 it was 8-2. Zagunis then ended the bout as decisively as it began: She clinched the gold with a three-step fleche that ended with her blade on Tan’s left shoulder.

“I am ecstatic! All of what you have seen has resulted from hours of hard work,” Zagunis told reporters afterward. “I was in the zone. I felt like I was going to win this when I stepped on the strip.”

History was made, and now it’s back to the library. When the three Americans return to the States, Sada plans to finish her history major at Yale; Emily will be a freshman at Columbia; and Zagunis will enter Notre Dame as an Olympic champion.

As for Tan, the lesson of Athens will linger. After earning the silver medal, she told reporters, “I didn’t know my [final] opponent that well. I can promise that I shall be better in 2008 in my country and I will have more self-esteem in order to win the gold medal.”