Ysaora Thibus

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.^[3]

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.^[4]

Thibus competed in the 2012 London Olympic Games.^[5] In 2016, after winning her first team bronze medal at the Rio Worlds in April,^[6] 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.^[7]

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,^[8] losing in the final to the Russian team.^[9] Beaten in the second round in individual, she said she was "psychologically exhausted" after the Olympic competition and stopped training for four months.^[10]

In February 2024, Thibus was issued with a provisional suspension after testing positive for ostarine at the Challenge International de Paris event in January.^[11] 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.^[12] 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.^[12][13]

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.

Thibus founded the EssentiElle program for women athletes, which aims to amplify their voices within the world of athletics.^[14]

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.^[15][16]