She was one of four Arab female Olympic bronze medallists honoured at the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Creative Sports Awards ceremony last Monday in Dubai, thanks to her history- making efforts in Rio last summer. Tunisian fencer Ines Boubakri, 28, is the first Arab woman to win World Championship or Olympic medals in her sport and is hoping her heroics on the global stage can inspire young Arab girls to pursue their own dreams in sport.
Sport360 caught up with Boubakri in Dubai this week to discuss her Olympic journey.
How did you get started in the sport?
My start was very early. I used to accompany my mother (Henda Zaouali) to the fencing hall, she was a fencing champion and went to the 1996 Olympics. She is now a national coach. I used to go to practice with her and bit by bit I fell in love with the sport. I was lucky because my mother was training with foreign coaches and they took care of me and I started to create my own personality in the sport.
When did you get the sense that you could actually be really good at this?
My first real achievement came when I was 14 years old, I won the African Championship competing against the seniors. That opened many doors for me because I was very young and I managed to beat competitors much older than me, and it’s also when people began to take notice of me and they got the impression I could compete on the global stage.
You’re the first Arab female fencer to win medals at Worlds and the Olympics, how do you explain your success?
Without my family’s encouragement I couldn’t have achieved anything. They dreamt with me about the Olympics and pushed me to pursue my goals. After I got my high school diploma, we realised the need to move to France.
In Tunisia, there weren’t enough fencers for me to compete against and train with. In France, I would get the exposure I needed to improve, they have the right clubs, coaches, competitors. But when I went to France, the goal was not just sport, it was important to also pursue a degree there.
I now have a Master’s degree in mental preparation in sport. It was a real struggle juggling both fencing and my studies but I managed it well and I achieved my first real dream when I won a medal at the World Championship in 2014 – the first by an Arab female in the history of the sport. And two years later, I won Olympic bronze in Rio.
Your Olympic journey has been a long one, tell me about that…
This was my third Olympics. In Beijing 2008, I got to see what an Olympic Games is all about. In London 2012, I returned with much more enthusiasm and I lost in the quarter-finals by literally one touch, that is what separated me from a medal.
Coming so close in London and not getting a medal, how did you mentally bounce back from that?
In the beginning I was really sad that I made the quarter-finals then lost. The Olympics come around every four years, you never know if your body will be ready in four years’ time, anything can happen and your career can end. I was so sad.
But I also found out my worth during London, I found so many people coming up to me and telling me ‘you made a legend like Valentina Vezzali, a six-time Olympic champion, scared of you, and she screamed so loud and cried tears of joy after she managed to beat you’.
I went to a sports psychologist after London and he worked a lot with me. He showed me videos of my matches and spoke to me about the effect I had on my opponents, how they looked and how they reacted. My confidence started to grow bit by bit.
I matured and my dream got bigger. I told myself I have four years now to prepare for Rio. I made a new plan, I created a full team around me, a coach, a physical trainer, a mental trainer and that helped me work a lot and that’s what got me the bronze medal.
How did you feel when you secured that bronze medal in Rio?
I had injured my back in the semi-finals and faced a Russian fencer in the bronze medal match, she had beaten me in the world championship. I was so focused on my injury and I was in pain during the match and the ref kept asking me if I wanted to retire. I was down 6-2. During the one-minute break, my coach was speaking to me but I couldn’t hear a single word. I was telling myself ‘Ines, you are moments away from a bronze medal, you should forget about the pain and think about what you can achieve’.
I kept thinking about all those years of work, the sacrifices, everything I went through and told myself ‘you went through all this so you can finish fourth?’
In all honesty, fourth place is the worst-ever finish you could get. Ask any athlete if they prefer finishing last or fourth, and they will tell you last is better. So I decided to put my injury behind me and I put all my might into those final moments. Anyone who knows me knows that I always scream with enthusiasm with every touch during my fights to show my opponent that I’m in the match. But this time, after my last touch, I removed my mask and did not scream. That moment I was still trying to digest what just happened, ‘Ines has a medal, Ines has made history, Ines has achieved a crowning moment for Arab women’… after I shook my opponent’s hand and the ref’s hand, I forgot all about my injury and I just jumped for joy.