Ilias Iliadis is a Georgian-born Greek judoka who has been competing for Greece since the start of his international career.
He won a gold medal in the half-middleweight (81 kg) division at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens at age 17. Illiadis also won a gold medal 6 years later at the 2010 World Judo Championships in Tokyo in the −90 kg category.
As Greece’s flagbearer, he had the honour of being the first athlete to march into the Bird’s Nest Stadium during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Iliadis is a cousin of another Olympic champion, Georgian judoka Zurab Zviadauri, who also won gold at the 2004 Summer Olympic games. Iliadis’s family moved to Greece in the 2003. He was adopted by Nikos Iliadis.According to some sources he was born on 1982.
Iliadis is known as one of the strongest and best conditioned Judokas. Check out how he trains with his Greek teammate:
In this video Ilias Iliadis is training in the mountains of Georgia one month before he takes to the tatami for the 2012 London Olympic Games.
ILIAS ILIADIS is training with his great friend and legendary Judoka GEORGII ZANTARAIA in Bakuriani, Georgia (27/06/2014).
