Chicago’s Kennedy Blades will wrestle for a gold medal after beating 3 higher seeds in her Olympic debut

PARIS — Chicago native Kennedy Blades will wrestle for a gold medal Sunday after a stellar Olympic debut that included one of the tournament’s best throws by any competitor — regardless of gender or weight class.

Blades, 20, went 3-0 Saturday to reach the 76-kilogram final, notching wins against three higher-seeded opponents. She will wrestle world champion Yuka Kagami of Japan in the final match of these Summer Games, and she’s assured of at least a silver medal.

“Just one more sleep and my body will be feeling good,” she said after defeating No. 1 seed Aiperi Medet Kyzy of Kyrgyzstan in the semifinals. “I’m ready to just blow it through the water.”

Chicago wrestler Kennedy Blades brings home a silver medal in her Olympic debut: ‘A huge accomplishment’

In her first match, she executed a textbook suplex for five points and closed out an 11-0 technical fall, wrestling’s version of the slaughter rule.

Her opponent, Catalina Axente of Romania, lay on the mat for several minutes after the move before being carried out on a stretcher. The Romanian Olympic committee later released a statement that Axente suffered a neck injury but did not appear to have suffered any fractures or nerve damage.

Blades said Axente’s coach texted USA Wrestling after the match to assure Blades that Axente was not seriously injured. Blades, who said she prays before each match that both she and her opponent are protected from harm, said she appreciated the gesture because she was concerned.

“It’s just a match, you know,” Blades said. “We just want to go out there and have fun and see who’s the best, so I would never want my opponents to be hurt. When she was lying there, I did say a prayer to make sure she was OK.”

The daughter of a Chicago police sergeant and an Illinois Department of Corrections employee, Blades began wrestling when she was 7 years old and spent her early years competing primarily against boys. In 2016, Blades, then 12, became the first female competitor to win an Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation state title in a bracket dominated by male competitors.

Since her historic win, IKWF has launched a girls division, and wrestling has become the fastest-growing girls high school sport in the state .

Blades, meanwhile, blazed her own path, making four national teams in her age group since her state title and winning the under-20 world championships in 2021. That same year, while still in high school, she was runner-up at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Blades stunned the wrestling world in April when she upset six-time world champion Adeline Gray at the U.S. Olympic trials. After making the team, she returned to suburban Addison, where she continued to train with her longtime coach, Israel “Izzy” Martinez.

Though Blades’ family lives on the city’s southwest side, Martinez and USA Wrestling helped her find an Airbnb in Elmhurst so she would have a short commute to his training facility and a coffee shop within walking distance when she needed to decompress.

In addition to working out daily with the male wrestlers at Martinez’s gym, Blades also had female training partners flown in by the federation to help her prepare for Paris.

Martinez, who has known Blades since she was 7, became emotional after the semifinal victory. His father, Jose, had coached her in grade school before she transitioned to Izzy Martinez’s club as a teenager.

“She grew up with my father,” Izzy Martinez said. “And to watch her do this is awesome. It’s tough to even put into words.”

She and Martinez have made it clear since April that Olympic gold was their goal. That’s still the objective, Blades said.

“I don’t want to just go back home with a silver,” she said. “I want gold because that was my mentality the whole time. So I’m just going to go out there and have fun. And just, like, let it fly.”