Daria Bilodid earns the complete set of judo world titles

Ukrainian teen Daria Bilodid defeated IJF debutant Yoshida Sana (JPN), the younger sister of senior U57kg world champion Yoshida Tsukasa, to complete a full set of world judo titles. Judo’s youngest senior world champion maintained her unbeaten record against Japanese judoka as Yoshida became the seventh victim of the Ukrainian phenomenon who just turned 18.

Senior world champion Bilodid, who was wearing her red backpatch for the first time having won gold in Baku in September, threw Yoshida with an uchi-mata after two minutes for ippon to win back-to-back world titles in successive competitions.

In the first semi-final contest Junior European Championships bronze medallist Laura Martinez Abelenda (ESP) fell to Yoshida by ippon from a textbook uchi-mata. In the second semi-final Bilodid defeated Junior European Championships bronze medallist Mireia Lapuerta Comas (ESP) at the halfway point with her signature o-uchi-gari for ippon.

The first bronze medal was claimed by European u23 Championships silver medallist Andrea Stojadinov (SRB) who defeated Lapuerta Comas with a ko-uchi-gake for ippon after 71 seconds of golden score. Stojadinov probed her opponent with an o-uchi-gari before switching to hook in and take down her Spanish opponent on the edge of the contest area for the maximum score.

The second bronze medal contest pitted the number one seed from Spain against the number two seed from Kazakhstan. Martinez Abelenda, who took silver a year ago, bested Junior Asian Championships gold medallist Galiya Tynbayeva (KAZ) to salvage a place on the podium. The Spaniard scored two times without reply to register Spain on the medal table in Nassau.