Daria Bilodid: World Champion judo at the age of 14

Daria Bilodid has become the second youngest ever World Champion in judo. The 14-year old youngster from the Ukraine claimed the world title for Cadets in Sarajevo U44kg. Only Japanese Sarah Asahina was 3 days younger than the Ukrainian teen in 2011. Only three judoka of age 14 ever won the title, Mikhail Igolnikov (RUS) in 2011 and Mai Morishita (JPN) in 2009. In all those years the Cadet Worlds were for children U17 years.

Bilodid defeated Italian Sofia Petitto, who won the EYOF last week in Tbilisi. Bilodid has been amazing this year with IJF World Tour victories in Zagreb, Teplice, Cluj and she won the European title in Sofia, and remains undefeated this season.

Bilodid defeated her four opponents, Michaela Chiss (ROU) in the first round, Riko Igarashi of Japan in her second bout, Igarashi won bronze via the repechage with an ippon seoi-nage having led by a waza-ari and yuko. In the semi final she beat Iuliia Ogarkova of Russia. The Ukrainian held the Russian down for 20 seconds and ippon. Ogarkova lost her match against Jessica Silva of Brazil for bronze after she got thrown for ippon after 69 seconds.

She was coached by her father, former European champion Gennady Bilodid. In the final Bilodid was penalised with a shido for putting her hand inside the trouser leg of her opponent during a sankaku-gatame but learnt from that mistake and carried out the same technique a minute later with no issues to force the Italian to submit. Daughter Daria said: “My dream is to win the Olympic title, which is my greatest ambition. I am very pleased to win here in Sarajevo and in front of my parents.”

Especially Russian judoka have won the double a few times. In total 16 athletes won the double.

The small judoka is the 7^th world champion in the history of Ukraine. The second Cadet World Champion, three Junior World Champions and Georgii Zantaraia was the first and only Senior World Champion in 2009.

2000 Renat Mirzaliyev, WCH U20 Nabeul

2000 Anastasia Matrosiva, WCH U20 Nabeul

2009 Giorgii Zantaraia, seniors in Rotterdam

2009 Quedjau Nhabali, WCH U20 Paris

2011 Pavlo Skopnenko, ECHU17 Kiev

2015 Daria Bilodid, ECHU18 Sarajevo