Inès Boubakri

Inès Boubakri is a Tunisian foil fencer, born in Tunis on 28 December 1988. ^{1 2} She competed at four Olympic Games, and her bronze medal at Rio 2016 made her the first Tunisian, and the first African and Arab woman, to win an Olympic medal in fencing. ¹

Boubakri took up fencing at the age of five, following her mother Henda Zaouali, herself an épée fencer. Short of resources in Tunisia, she moved to France at nineteen and joined the Association sportive de Bourg-la-Reine, training under Yann Detienne. ³ She is one of the few fencers to compete at the highest level with two different weapons, foil and épée; at the 2008 African Championships in Casablanca she took the individual foil title and the team épée title. ³

At her first Olympics, Beijing 2008, Boubakri lost her opening match 9–13 to the Chinese-born Canadian fencer Luan Jujie. ¹ At London 2012 she reached the quarter-finals, where the three-time Olympic champion Valentina Vezzali beat her 8–7 with a point in the sudden-death minute. ¹ She won bronze at the 2014 World Championships in Kazan, and at Rio 2016 she came back from 4–7 down to beat Russia's Aida Shanayeva 15–11 for the bronze medal. ¹ A second world championship bronze followed at Wuxi in 2018, along with the Mediterranean Games title at Tarragona the same year and the African Games title in 2019; she competed again at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. ¹

In 2014 Boubakri married the French fencer Erwann Le Péchoux, who also won a medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics. ¹

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