Everything You Need To Know About Daria Bilodid

Daria Bilodid is a Ukrainian judoka who was born in Kiev on October 10th 2000. She competes in the under 48kg weight class and is 172cm tall, making her somewhat tall and slim for a professional judoka. Bilodid has been coached by her parents since age 6, with her own father Gennadiy Bilodid being a two time European champion himself. Despite her parent’s athletic background and achievements, Daria Bilodid had already eclipsed them by the time she was 17.

It was at this age when she became the world’s youngest ever judo world champion at Baku in 2018. Bilodid made the record books again becoming the youngest two time champion again by repeating her success in Tokyo 2019. If that wasn’t enough, she became the first ever Ukranian woman to win an Olympic judo medal in 2021. She has repeatedly claimed that she will be continuing her career as a judoka until 2024 at the very least.

Achievements

• World championships 2018 (gold), 2019 (gold)
• Tokyo Olympics 2020 (bronze)
• European Games 2019 (gold)
• European Championships 2017 (gold), 2019 (gold)
• IJF Grand Slam – 4 x gold
• IJF Grand Prix – 3 x gold

Hair Pulling Controversy

In 2019 at the world championships in Tokyo, Bilodid twice pulled the hair of her opponent Laura Martinez. Whilst the first incident may have been over enthusiastic and not really gained any advantage, the same cannot be said for the second offense. The second pull of the hair allowed Bilodid to fully control the posture of her opponent and score ippon.

Perhaps even more strangely was the fact that this event seem to be largely ignored by the referees who continued the match as if nothing had happened.

Bilodid posted the following comment on her facebook page, clearing up that the hair pulls were not intentional.

“Respect for an opponent is one of the most important qualities of an athlete.
At the World Championship in a fight with the Spanish girl, I twice took her hair, it looks dirty and terrible. I understand those people who write me nasty things about this. I honestly don’t know why it happened, and twice in a row. I didn’t notice this during the fight, but I saw in the video after the competition. But this is a struggle and all sorts of unforeseen mistakes happen. Throughout my sports career, I have never done this and have not shown a dirty fight. I have already apologized several times for this incident, but I’m still ashamed.
I hope this never happens again because it looks awful.
I want to say that regardless of all victories and defeats, rivalries and the desire to win, I respect every opponent. We are all people, we all have the right to make mistakes, but the main thing is to always remain human and not lose respect for ourselves and for people”.

Other

In an interview with a Russian magazine Bilodid claims that she adores her parents and couldn’t imagine having anyone else as her coach.

On a typical day, Bilodid will wake up at 7am and workout for 2 hours doing exercises such as weights and cardio. For the rest of the day she will use this time as recovery and then train judo for 3-4 hours in the evening. She has stated several times that she loves fast food including things such as pizza and sweets, although mentions that she will only eat this food once or twice per year due to the impact of unhealthy food on your body. In her spare time, Daria likes to read books and go shopping.

Due to her beautiful appearance, Daria Bilodid is one of the most followed judokas in the world even though she has not had a long career. Her instagram account already has 500k followers. Her current dating status is unknown, but her ex-boyfriend was Denys Popov, a professional soccer player for Dynamo Kiev.

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As Bilodid is popular in both Ukraine and Russia, as well as Japan for her judo ability, she became a brand ambassador for Mitsubishi in 2020.

A Georgian wine company made a themed bottle in her honor calling her the “judo queen”.