Ysaora Thibus

Template:Short description Template:DMCA 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.

Career

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.

In February 2024, Thibus was issued with a provisional suspension after testing positive for ostarine at the Challenge International de Paris event in January. Following due process, in May 2024 the International Fencing Federation deemed that Thibus bore "no fault or negligence" for the anti-doping rule violation. They accepted her explanation that the source of the ostarine was through kissing her partner Race Imboden whom she was unaware had been using the ostarine. Therefore, other than disqualification of results from the event in Paris, Thibus received no sanction. An appeal by WADA to the decision was dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in July 2025.

At the Paris Olympics in 2024, Thibus lost her first match in the women's individual foil and was a member of the French team in the team foil event where they placed fifth.

Personal life

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

From around 2021 Thibus was in a long-term relationship and engaged to American foil fencer Race Imboden, however as of 2025 they appear to have split up.

Medal record

Olympic Games

Year	Location	Event	Position
2021	Template:Flagicon Tokyo, Japan	Team Women's Foil	2nd

World Championship

Year	Location	Event	Position
2013	Template:Flagicon Budapest, Hungary	Team Women's Foil	2nd
2014	Template:Flagicon Kazan, Russia	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2015	Template:Flagicon Moscow, Russia	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2016	Template:Flagicon Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2017	Template:Flagicon Leipzig, Germany	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2018	Template:Flagicon Wuxi, China	Individual Women's Foil	2nd
2018	Template:Flagicon Wuxi, China	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2022	Template:Flagicon Cairo, Egypt	Individual Women's Foil	1st

European Championship

Year	Location	Event	Position
2012	Template:Flagicon Legnano, Italy	Team Women's Foil	2nd
2013	Template:Flagicon Zagreb, Croatia	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2013	Template:Flagicon Zagreb, Croatia	Team Women's Foil	2nd
2014	Template:Flagicon Strasbourg, France	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2015	Template:Flagicon Montreux, Switzerland	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2016	Template:Flagicon Toruń, Poland	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2017	Template:Flagicon Tbilisi, Georgia	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2018	Template:Flagicon Novi Sad, Serbia	Team Women's Foil	3rd
2019	Template:Flagicon Düsseldorf, Germany	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2019	Template:Flagicon Düsseldorf, Germany	Team Women's Foil	2nd

Grand Prix

Date	Location	Event	Position
2015-03-13	Template:Flagicon Havana, Cuba	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2016-06-03	Template:Flagicon Shanghai, China	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2017-05-19	Template:Flagicon Shanghai, China	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2020-02-07	Template:Flagicon Turin, Italy	Individual Women's Foil	1st
2021-03-26	Template:Flagicon Doha, Qatar	Individual Women's Foil	3rd

World Cup

Date	Location	Event	Position
2013-02-08	Template:Flagicon Budapest, Hungary	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2013-03-01	Template:Flagicon St. Petersburg, Russia	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2014-05-02	Template:Flagicon Shanghai, China	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2015-01-16	Template:Flagicon Gdańsk, Poland	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2015-10-16	Template:Flagicon Cancún, Mexico	Individual Women's Foil	1st
2017-01-13	Template:Flagicon Algier, Algeria	Individual Women's Foil	1st
2019-01-25	Template:Flagicon Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2019-05-03	Template:Flagicon Tauberbischofsheim, Germany	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2019-11-22	Template:Flagicon Cairo, Egypt	Individual Women's Foil	3rd
2020-01-10	Template:Flagicon Katowice, Poland	Individual Women's Foil	3rd

Awards

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

External links

• Template:Sports links