User:GoldBeluga/Ysaora Thibus

Ysaora Jennifer Thibus (born 22 August 1991 in Guadeloupe) is a French right-handed foil fencer, 2022 individual world champion, three-time Olympian, and 2021 team Olympic silver medalist.

Biography
Ysaora Thibus is a student at the École supérieure de commerce de Paris (ESCP Europe). In 2013, she received the Bernard Destremau prize from the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, which rewards a high-level athlete who combines competition and higher education.

In 2016 she qualified for the Rio Olympics and then won another team bronze medal at the Rio World Championships in April. Thibus financed part of her preparation for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games thanks to a participatory funding campaign launched, in partnership with Powerade, on the sports crowdfunding platform Sponsorise.me. After these Games, where Thibus met her partner Race Imboden, she chose to train in the United States with him.

She reached her first individual world podium in 2017 in Leipzig with a third place, then in 2018 in Wuxi where she lost 12-15 in the final to Alice Volpi.

In 2021, she won a silver medal in the team foil event with Anita Blaze, Astrid Guyart and Pauline Ranvier at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, losing in the final to the Russian team. Beaten in the second round of the individual competition, she said she was "psychologically exhausted" after the Olympic competition and stopped training for four months.

At the end of 2022, after a World Cup season without a podium finish, Ysaora Thibus won a bronze medal at the European Championships, her best performance being a narrow victory over Julia Walczyk (15-14), before losing to Arianna Errigo in the semi-finals (11-15). At the World Championships, Thibus, who has dropped down the world rankings, is seeded No. 10. Although her section of the draw opened up with the early elimination of No. 2 and No. 3 seeds Alice Volpi and Eleanor Harvey, she had to defeat Jessica Guo (No. 7, 15-8) and Sera Azuma (No. 15, 15-11) consecutively to reach the semifinals, where she defeated Harvey's opponent and tournament surprise, world No. 136 Maria Boldor (15-4). In the final, she met Italian Arianna Errigo, who led 10-4 in their career meetings9. Far from being pressured in this second career world final, Thibus put in a masterful performance, taking command of the score from the very first touches and gradually increasing her lead until the final score of 15 touches to 10. With this title, Thibus becomes only the third French foilist to win the world title, 51 years after Marie-Chantal Demaille in 1971 and 72 years after Renée Garilhe in 1950. She also won the team bronze medal.