ALBERT AXELROD was described by Eric Rosenberg, of the New York-based Fencers’ Club, as “a complete and unrepentant addict who hated to lose”. He hated the idea of flinching from an attack, too, and inspired the next generation of foil fencers by telling them that there was no need to step backwards in fencing. “I have no purely defensive moves,” he said. “I have absorbed my attack into my counter-attack.” With this combative determination he achieved a hard-fought bronze medal which has not since been bettered by an American in Olympic competition, and which is outshone only by the silver won by Joseph Levis in 1932.

Axelrod’s medal at the 1960 Games in Rome was particularly hard-won considering the sudden, unexpected dominance by the Soviet Union in the individual foil event. Fencing had previously been led by Europe, particularly France and Italy. In 1921, when Axelrod was born, the Italian brothers Nedo and Aldo Nadi held absolute sway, Nedo having won gold with all three competition blades at the previous year’s Olympics in Antwerp.

Axelrod, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had fled the pogroms, grew up in the Bronx. He was a sickly child and drifted into fencing because it seemed fairly innocuous. He suffered from a heart murmur, was often excused from games at school, and his mother was worried that anything too exhausting might be dangerous for him.

To this supposedly “safe” sport, Axelrod, who described himself as “the proverbial 98-pound weakling”, applied all his vigour, learning poise and technique from manuals written by Aldo Nadi. He was admitted to a club run by the fencing master George Santelli, and represented the club for more than 20 years.

The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted Axelrod’s training and forced him to learn less genteel weapons in service to the US Navy. Although in America’s Top Ten at this stage, he was not yet at his peak and was still building on his abilities. “Everyone attributes my skill to a physical freak, saying that I have tremendously fast reflexes,” he once said. “But I am not a natural athlete. When it comes to fencing, I’m completely synthetic. I ’ve had to practise arduously and break down into tiny components every move I make.”

When there was little left to learn in terms of theory, Axelrod left the Salle Santelli to learn a new attitude. At the City College of New York, he trained with one of the best fencing teams in America under Alexander Hern. Here he learnt to question the accepted back-and-forth of traditional technique and to respond to every attack with a counter-attack, aiming to move relentlessly forward against his opponent — a style which, while arguably lacking in grace, was formidable to compete against and would earn him the nickname The Tractor from his Russian rivals in Rome. He led City College to the national team foil championships in 1948.

Axelrod was a member of five consecutive US Olympic foil teams, from 1952 to 1968, and was ranked first in the country in 1955, 1958 and 1960. In his first two Olympics he was eliminated in the semi-finals of the individual foil event, but in Melbourne in 1956 he helped to get the US foil team into the finals, where they finished fourth. His individual bronze in 1960 came no easier; he had to survive a barrage to finish third. By this time he was 39, and had been competing against men half his age.

Axelrod won the gold medal in team foil at the 1959 and 1963 Pan American Games. At these games he also won silver medals in team and individual events in 1955, 1959 and 1963. After Rome, though, it seemed that he was past his zenith. By 1970 some critics were saying that his No 1 ranking said more about the lamentable state of fencing in America than it did about his abilities. Yet that year he sealed his placement with another national championship, just short of his 50th birthday.

Axelrod’s achievements are all the more extraordinary considering that he was an electrician for the Grumman Corporation for most of his life, fencing only in his spare time. He continued to battle with members at the Fencers’ Club well into his seventies. He took an interest in the next US Olympic fencing team, reckoned by some to be the most promising since 1960. He hoped that they would use his discipline of the ferocious, relentless counter-attack to good effect in Athens.

He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Henrietta, and by a son and a daughter.

Albert Axelrod, foil fencer, was born on February 21, 1921. He died on February 24, 2004, aged 83.