Who was the first female BJJ black belt?
The ever excellent Andre Borges who runs the ever excellent BJJ biographical site BJJHeroes.com, decided to track down the first female BJJ black belt.
History shows that the first female Judo black belt was Katsuko Osaki; it as awarded in January of 1933. The Kodokan even recorded that the first woman to enter Judo classes was Sueko Ashiya, in 1893. That is 40 years for the first female black belt.
Few nations enjoy a penchant for order and records equal to the Japanese. The ever excellent Andre Borges who runs the ever excellent BJJ biographical site BJJHeroes.com, decided to track down the first female BJJ black belt.
The search took four years.
As Borges detailed, he ran through a series of dead ends. First there was Leka Viera (she couldn’t remember anything). Then a newspaper said the first female BJJ black belt was Patricia Lage; when reached, Lage said she wasn’t. And, she said she remembered prior female black belts. But they ended up being Judo players.
Then Borges got a lead that the Corpo Quatro academy in Copacabana had been one of the first hubs for women’s BJJ in Rio. Borges reached Sylvio Behring through his son Ian, and the 7th degree black belt said before he ever awarded a black to a woman, Master Osvaldo Alves had. He believed her name was Vera, but he couldn’t remember a last name. That lead too fizzled out.
On November 2014, 4 years after we started this project, when speaking to Master Pascoal Duarte about his involvement in the creation of the closed guard in the early 1980′s, we found about his younger sister, who also trained jiu jitsu in those days. According to Pascoal she was very efficient from closed guard. I asked him which belt she was and he mentioned: black belt. black belt? we asked she probably was one of the first black belts in jiu jitsu, he simply replied she was the first.
Luckily Yvone Duarte (Pascoal’s sister) was super friendly and gladly replied our numerous questions once we got a hold of her. After all fact checking was finished, it was clear we had the right person.
Yvone fit the profile we set for this website like a glove. A true legendary figure forgotten over time by the jiu jitsu community, Duarte lived in a transitional period. She was a pioneer in pushing for a female division in the sport, and it was thanks to her efforts that we had the first female division back in 1985. She was the first woman to open her own academy, but since that was was in Brasília, a town too far away from the Rio buzz, people didn’t care enough to remember. She also helped establish the Brasilia federation of jiu jitsu, which helped grow the sport in the capital of Brasil.
Duarte’s list of accolades in our sport is tremendous, not just on the mats, but outside of them as well. Unfortunately for us, her career drifted her away from jiu jitsu, but wherever she went, and whatever she dedicated her resources too, she was heard and respected. A winner on all accounts and a great BJJ icon.
Thank you Yvone Duarte!
Duarte kept training is now a 5th degree black belt, the highest ranked in the world. But that’s another story…
