Episode Details

Sada Jacobson Bâby has competed on some of the biggest stages in sports. She represented the United States in fencing at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, won three Olympic medals, became the first American woman to reach No. 1 in the world in fencing, and competed collegiately at Yale.

Today, she is a business litigator and partner at Krevolin Horst in Atlanta — and a fencing mom traveling to tournaments with her two sons.

Sada joins Sports ’N Torts to talk about the entire journey: discovering fencing at 15, leaving Yale to train full time for the Olympics, competing alongside her sister, winning bronze in Athens, the historic American medal sweep in Beijing, and what life inside the Olympic Village was actually like.

She also talks about the transition from elite athlete to law student, finding a new identity after competition, and why she believes nearly everything she needed to know about being a lawyer she learned through fencing.

And now that her sons compete, Sada has discovered something surprising: watching her kids fence may be more stressful than competing for an Olympic medal herself.

We also get into legal writing, AI, business litigation, New Haven pizza, the Yale-Harvard rivalry, Olympic medals stored in a sock drawer, and Andy Roddick playing Boggle in the Olympic Village.

A fun conversation about competition, preparation, perspective, parenting and what comes after reaching the highest level of a sport.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode:

• How Sada discovered fencing at age 15 and quickly rose through the sport
• Leaving Yale to train full time for the 2004 Olympics
• Competing in Athens alongside her younger sister, Emily
• Recovering from a semifinal loss to win an Olympic bronze medal
• Returning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the historic U.S. women’s sabre medal sweep
• What life inside the Olympic Village is actually like
• Watching the Beijing Opening Ceremony with the U.S. women’s gymnastics team
• Running into athletes like Michael Phelps and Andy Roddick
• Why her Olympic medals currently live in a sock drawer
• Walking away from elite competition and finding a new identity
• Why she chose law school and eventually business litigation
• Her belief that “everything I need to know about being a lawyer I learned from fencing”
• Preparation, strategy and adjusting to an opponent in both fencing and litigation
• How she uses AI in legal research and writing
• Watching her sons compete and why being a sports parent can be harder than being the athlete
• New Haven pizza, Yale vs. Harvard and rapid-fire Olympic questions

Sada also explains why the result matters less than the experience for her sons right now — and why her job as a fencing parent is mostly to keep track of the equipment and hand over the water bottle.

As always, this episode is powered by the J. Stein Law FIrm - a personal injury law firm in Atlanta, GA - www.jsteinlawfirm.com.