| Kennedy Blades | |
| Full Name: | Kennedy Alexis Blades |
| Birth Date: | 4 September 2003 |
| Birth Place: | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education: | University of Iowa |
| Height: | 5 ft 11 in |
| Weight: | 76 kg |
| Sport: | Wrestling |
| Event: | Freestyle |
| Club: | Sunkist Kids Wrestling Club |
Kennedy Alexis Blades (born September 4, 2003)[1] is an American wrestler. She won the silver medal in the women's 76kg event at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.
Blades is from Chicago, Illinois.[1] She and her younger sister, Korina, started taking Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes when she was four years old.[2] She later switched to wrestling at age seven, joining a small club in the area.[2] As there were not many girls she could wrestle against, she often trained against boys.[2] She won several championships competing against boys as a youth wrestler, including becoming the first female to win the IKWF Illinois state title, in 2016.[1] [2] [3] [4]
Blades and her sister, also a wrestler, attended Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania, the first American high school to have a girls wrestling program.[2] She said that "because there weren't any women's high school wrestling teams in the nation, we had to travel around the world to get competition" – while in high school, she competed against wrestlers from countries including Japan, Russia, Estonia, Austria and Sweden.[2] Blades won the U.S. Cadet national championship in 2018, and the U16 national championship, U17 national championship, and Junior national championship in 2019.[1]
At age 17, Blades finished runner-up at the U.S. trials for the 2020 Summer Olympics, losing to Tamyra Mensah-Stock, who went on to win the Olympic gold medal.[3] After she graduated from high school, she joined the wrestling club Sunkist Kids in Arizona and enrolled at Arizona State University.[2] Blades was the gold medalist at the 2021 U20 world championship and later won silver at the 2023 U23 world championship.[1] She also won gold at the 2023 Ibrahim Moustafa Tournament.[1] In 2024, she defeated 2020 Olympic medalist Adeline Gray at the U.S. Olympic trials, thus qualifying for the 2024 Summer Olympics.[5] [6] Blades won the silver medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics, in the women's 76 kg weight class.[7] [8]