PARIS -- Lee Kiefer became the first American fencer to win three Olympic gold medals as the U.S. got its first team fencing gold in women's foil at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.
Kiefer, a two-time individual gold medalist, teamed up with individual silver medalist Lauren Scruggs, Jacqueline Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub to hold on for a 45-39 win over Italy in the final.
"This team medal is everything," Kiefer said. "Our team has been kind of locked in, putting in so much work and passion for the last three years. And to be able to show that to everyone is really cool."
It was Scruggs who anchored the team in the ninth and final round. Facing a late rally from Italy's Arianna Errigo, who cut an eight-point U.S. lead to three, Scruggs took the next three points to close out the win and celebrate with a shout of delight.
When she delivered the final touch, Scruggs took off her mask with the U.S. flag adorning it, turned around and lifted her arms and head to the covered ceiling inside the famed Grand Palais, before suddenly dropping to her knees and shouting with joy.
"You don't want to be the person to lose the bout," Scruggs, 21, who attends Harvard, said. "Luckily, I had a big lead, and it gave me some time to kind of get my bearings together and whatnot.
"A lot of that just kind of came from my pride. I'm a very proud person. So, at the end, you really saw me use every last ounce of strength to just battle out and get those touches."
The team of two-time individual gold medalist Kiefer, silver medalist Lauren Scruggs, Jacqueline Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub held on for a 45-39 win over Italy in the final.
Scruggs faced a late rally from Italy's Arianna Errigo, who cut an eight-point U.S. lead to three, but the 21-year-old took the next three points to close out the win and celebrated with a shout of delight.
Weintraub, the U.S. team's alternate, was substituted into the final and immediately faced Italy's most experienced fencer, the 2012 gold medalist Errigo. That didn't faze Weintraub, who went 6-4 against Errigo and 11-5 from her two matchups.
After the match, Weintraub -- who was making her first Olympics appearance -- was excitedly posing for pictures and telling passersby about what was contained in the gold medal hanging around her neck: "A piece of the Eiffel Tower."
"It was definitely nerve-racking, but I have a lot of trust and faith in myself and also my team," Weintraub said. "And I know that they've been working for this for a really long time, so I decided to just let it all out there."
The win was also a bit of redemption for the Americans, who lost the bronze-medal match to Italy at the Tokyo Olympics. In the years since, the Italians have dominated the international stage, winning the last two world championships.
So how exactly did the Americans get to the point in the past three years of beating the best team in the world to become the best themselves?
"We had a lot of great coaches, we had a lot of talent and we did have a lot of funding," Kiefer said. "So, the program, we owe a thank you for helping put in the resources to let us do this."
Kiefer earlier turned around the semifinal bout against Canada, going a combined 23-12 in her three matchups, including 13-4 against 16-year-old Yunjia Zhang when the U.S. had been four points down. The U.S. won 45-39.
The U.S. now has four fencing medals at the Paris Olympics and two gold medals in fencing at the same Olympics for the first time.
An American fencer, Albertson Van Zo Post, won two gold medals at the 1904 St. Louis Games but one of those was a team event in which he competed alongside two Cuban fencers. That medal is officially considered a "mixed team" win, not a U.S. gold.
Japan won its first women's fencing medal of the Paris Olympics with a 33-32 win over Canada in the bronze-medal bout.
ESPN's Coley Harvey and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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