Ysaora Thibus

Ysaora Jennifer Thibus (born 22 August 1991) is a French right-handed foil fencer, 2022 individual world champion, three-time Olympian, and 2020 team Olympic silver medalist.

Biography
Ysaora Thibus is studying at the ESCP Business School. 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.

Thibus took up fencing at the age of 7 in Guadeloupe. At 17, she moved to France to train with the French national youth team in Aix-en-Provence, joining the senior training team in Paris a year later.

Thibus competed in the 2012 London Olympic Games. In 2016, after winning her first team bronze medal at the Rio Worlds in April, she participated in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

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 Tokyo Olympic Games, losing in the final to the Russian team. Beaten in the second round in individual, she said she was "psychologically exhausted" after the Olympic competition and stopped training for four months.

Thibus founded the EssentiElle program for women athletes, which aims to amplify their voices within the world of athletics.

Thibus and American foil fencer Race Imboden met at a party after the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and began dating shortly afterward. The couple became engaged at Le Pigalle, a hotel in Paris, after the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Thibus was suspended on February 8, 2024, after testing positive for ostarine, a banned substance. She said that her positive doping test was due to an exchange of “bodily fluids” with Imboden. On May 21, 2024, she sent out the news that she was cleared from doping charges and was back on track towards competing in the Paris Olympic Games. Official confirmation of this decision is pending.

Awards

 * Knight of the National Order of Merit (France) on 8 September 2021.