Ysaora Thibus Converges Fashion and Sport

Growing up in the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, the Paris-based athlete and editor Ysaora Thibus didn’t have aspirations to be a champion. She came from a family where hard work was valued, but her entry into her sport, fencing, was largely by chance. “I started ballet really young and when I was seven, my mom found fencing for my little brother,” she explains over Zoom. “I was there and I fell in love with the sport. It was something where I could express myself more.”

The journey that followed has been marked by strong passion and a talent that evolved organically. “My first competition, I finished third, but I was crying because I didn’t win,” recalls Thibus. “From there, I realized that I like to have a purpose. I was ambitious and competitive. I always did one step at a time. It was just something that I liked to do and I was good at. And I pursued it.”

Now thirty-three, Thibus has competed in four Olympic Games and earned a World Championship title in individual foil in Cairo in 2022. She won a silver medal in Tokyo in 2021.

For many, especially in the media, this would be the full story, ready to stop at any point Thibus stopped winning. If you speak to her, however, you’ll quickly find that this champion arc only scratches the surface. Thibus’s journey to the highest levels of competition in foil fencing has come with strength but also vulnerability and resilience in equal measure. The athlete also has other pursuits: Even as she has maintained her rigorous training regimen, Thibus is working to change perceptions and bring visibility to her fellow female athletes. Enter EssentiElle Stories, her digital platform which she launched in 2020 to tell the stories of female athletes and bring attention to social issues in women’s sports, including through her interview with the American sprinter and maternal health advocate Allyson Felix for Cero Magazine’s third issue. This summer, she released the first edition of Nineteen Hundred magazine, a print publication offering nuanced storytelling around female athletes with in-depth features, interviews, and fashion editorials. Documentary shorts spotlighting seven female athletes as they prepared for the Paris Olympic Games followed.

Looking back, Thibus’s own career got serious when she left her island to train in France at seventeen. “I just wanted to do everything I [could] in the sport but I never thought I would go so far,” she says. “I could not stop doing it somehow.”

This pursuit wasn’t always easy. “I had a relationship where you know you have a passion but it’s also really hard because sometimes you don’t understand it or you are losing it and it hurts or you want to grow in it but it’s not that easy and you question yourself: ‘Are you ready to do all this effort all the time?’” she adds. “Because it is a lot of work. At the same time, I could not stop doing it.”

Every time a challenge arrived, she knew there was something she could learn or a way to improve. “It was an introspective way to discover myself: What are my limits, what am I able to do?” she explains. “As you grow up, you don’t really know who you are or where you want to go. I had this perfect channel that I could really explore all these things inside me.”

Thibus competed in her first Olympic Games at the age of twenty in London in 2012. At the same time, she was studying economics at the Panthéon-Sorbonne. She later completed a master’s in management at ESCP Business School while still competing. “It was really difficult to pursue this at the same time as the sport,” she says. “They preferred an athlete that commits one hundred percent only in sports. It took me a while to understand why I need to do other things outside of sports, why I still wanted to be a champion—and also not see myself in the representation of the champion at the time.”

Four years after London, Thibus competed in the Rio Games, where she met her now-husband, US Olympic fencer and our sports editor, Race Imboden. She placed a disappointing fifth in the individual round. “I was super devastated,” she recalls. “I hate losing. I think it’s my flaw and my motivation.”

This experience compelled her to go to Los Angeles to train alongside Imboden. It was the first time in her life she dedicated herself solely to fencing. “I thought, ‘What would happen if I just did that one hundred percent?’” she recalls.

Then the pandemic hit. As in the case of so many of us, she was cut off from the goal that drove her. “I was going through an identity crisis in a sense,” relates Thibus. “I was like, ‘My whole thing is about sports and now that it is obvious that the Games are postponed, who am I? Who am I outside of sports?’”

That’s when EssentiElle Stories came to life. “I had time. Everything stopped,” she says. “So I decided to create something close to my heart, something that matters for me, and it was this platform to highlight female athletes.”

EssentiElle Stories is a place to showcase female athletes with a depth and visibility rarely seen elsewhere. Thibus wanted to address the gender attention gap and sponsorship discrepancy in sports; EssentiElle was also an opportunity to push against the often hollow representation of female athletes and the extreme amounts of pressure that arise when visibility and scrutiny lack genuine representation. The platform features a spotlight on the student and judo Olympian Blandine Pont; posts highlighting overlooked inequities (for instance, the lack of recognition of how period pain and menstruation impact performance); and a host of blunt, nuanced conversations about the female experience in training and competition.

For Thibus, the platform was about female athletes, but also “this reputation of the champion,” she explains. “It has always bothered me that the champion has to be strong, that we don’t talk about them when they lose, only when they win,” muses Thibus. “I felt like it was so much richer to talk about these in-between moments and the difficulties and how they rebound. That was my purpose: to give them a space where they could talk about what they wanted to talk about that the media at the time didn’t care about. We go always for who is winning. This was missing some nuances and also some time to go deeper.”

Nineteen Hundred, which Thibus focused on during her suspension, provides an opportunity to further explore these stories. The first issue, published in June, is a look inside the lives and practices of several top French female athletes. “We invited female photographers to go see seven French athletes that are going to the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” explains Thibus. “Instead of standing still and posing for the camera in a really corporate way, I wanted to show [their training], to have movement, to have real expression. Sometimes, we sexualize female sports and, actually, when we’re in it, we’re sweating. You can still own your femininity in this space.”

Thibus’s team also produced fashion editorials alongside three cover stories. “The idea was also to show that it was possible to make female athletes icons,” she says. “We did a cover shoot with Magda [Wiet-Hénin]. She does taekwondo and she’s a world champion. She has never been in fashion clothes. She’s never done a fashion shoot like that and she felt amazing and strong and powerful.”

The goal is to change perceptions and create opportunities, as well as give female athletes a space to connect with each other. Thibus is currently working on a documentary series showcasing the intimate moments, experiences, and passions of five Olympic athletes. “It’s not an entertainment platform. It’s a serious thing,” she says. “I want to tell serious things. I want to talk also about important social stories that you can see in sports. I believe it is a place that has an impact on society.”

For more information, please visit NineteenHundredMagazine.com. Read this story and many more in print by ordering our eighth issue here.