Donia Abu Talib

Donia Abu Talib aka Dunya Abutaleb (born c. 1997) is a Saudi Arabian taekwondo competitor. She is the first Saudi woman to qualify for an Olympics on her own merit.

Life
Talib was born in about 1997. At Saudi schools, girls were not allowed to exercise. When she was eight her father introduced her to the Korean sport of taekwondo which was an unusual sport in Saudi Arabia and particularly for a girl. She was in a club until she was thirteen but she was then banned from the club because she was a girl. However she continued to practice at home. Talib's status is unusual. As recently as 2012 Saudi Arabia were told that if they did not have any female athletes in the Olympics then they would not be invited to the competition. In 2012 there were two Saudi women to the Olympics in London.

She competed at the Saudi games and she was one of four athletes from Saudi Arabia who competed at the 2022 World Taekwondo Championships in Guadalajara, Mexico and she was the only female. The other three were Fahd Al-Samih, Riyad Al-Dhafiri and Ali Al-Mabrouk who compete in the 54, 58 and 80 kg categories. Talib's category is 49 kg. They share a coach who is Kurban Bogdaev and he is from Russia. She came third in the flyweight category in Mexico. At the 2022 Asian games she also came third in her category.

In 2024, her country's record on women's rights was reported as "abysmal". In the same year Talib became the first Saudi woman ever to qualify for a place at an Olympics. All women previously had been given a place because of quotas. Talib's place was entirely on merit and this news was welcomed by the Saudi Minister of Sport Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal. Her achievement and the minister's reaction were widely reported as a significant event.