Judo at the 2004 Summer Olympics

Judo at the 2004 Summer Olympics took place in the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall and featured 368 judoka competing for 14 gold medals with seven different weight categories in both the men's and women's competitions. Japan dominated the event by taking 8 gold and 2 silver medals.

Gold and silver medals in each weight class were determined by a single-elimination bracket. There was a repechage for those who are eliminated by one of the eventual semifinalists. Since there are four semifinalists, this means that four of the losers of the round of 32 (i.e., 25%) faced four of the losers from the round of 16 (50%). The winners of these matches faced the four judokas who have lost in the quarterfinals. The winners, then, of these four matches faced each other to narrow the repechage field down to two judokas. Until this stage, the repechage has been segregated into two distinct halves, with each successive competitor facing another one from the same half of the original bracket; but each of the two judokas who emerge from the repechage challenged the loser of the other bracket's semifinal. (Since these two always come from opposite halves of the original bracket, they could not have faced each other already.) The winners of these two matches were each awarded a bronze medal, making judo unusual among Olympic events in not determining a single third-place finisher.

There was controversy in the men's competition, when Iranian competitor and two-times world champion Arash Miresmaeili weighed in overweight and was disqualified before a match in which he would have faced Israeli judoka Ehud Vaks. Miresmaeili's comments strongly suggested that he had intentionally disqualified himself so as not to compete against an Israeli.

Medal summary

Men's events

Event	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Extra-lightweight (60 kg)	Tadahiro Nomura  Japan	Nestor Khergiani  Georgia	Khashbaataryn Tsagaanbaatar  Mongolia
			Choi Min-Ho  South Korea
Half-lightweight (66 kg)	Masato Uchishiba  Japan	Jozef Krnáč  Slovakia	Georgi Georgiev  Bulgaria
			Yordanis Arencibia  Cuba
Lightweight (73 kg)	Lee Won-Hee  South Korea	Vitaliy Makarov  Russia	Leandro Guilheiro  Brazil
			Jimmy Pedro  United States
Half-middleweight (81 kg)	Ilias Iliadis  Greece	Roman Gontyuk  Ukraine	Dmitri Nossov  Russia
			Flávio Canto  Brazil
Middleweight (90 kg)	Zurab Zviadauri  Georgia	Hiroshi Izumi  Japan	Mark Huizinga  Netherlands
			Khasanbi Taov  Russia
Half-heavyweight (100 kg)	Ihar Makarau  Belarus	Jang Sung-Ho  South Korea	Ariel Zeevi  Israel
			Michael Jurack  Germany
Heavyweight (+100 kg)	Keiji Suzuki  Japan	Tamerlan Tmenov  Russia	Indrek Pertelson  Estonia
			Dennis van der Geest  Netherlands

Women's events

Event	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Extra-lightweight (48 kg)	Ryoko Tani  Japan	Frédérique Jossinet  France	Gao Feng  China
			Julia Matijass  Germany
Half-lightweight (52 kg)	Xian Dongmei  China	Yuki Yokosawa  Japan	Ilse Heylen  Belgium
			Amarilis Savón  Cuba
Lightweight (57 kg)	Yvonne Bönisch  Germany	Kye Sun-Hui  North Korea	Deborah Gravenstijn  Netherlands
			Yurisleidy Lupetey  Cuba
Half-middleweight (63 kg)	Ayumi Tanimoto  Japan	Claudia Heill  Austria	Driulis González  Cuba
			Urška Žolnir  Slovenia
Middleweight (70 kg)	Masae Ueno  Japan	Edith Bosch  Netherlands	Qin Dongya  China
			Annett Böhm  Germany
Half-heavyweight (78 kg)	Noriko Anno  Japan	Liu Xia  China	Yurisel Laborde  Cuba
			Lucia Morico  Italy
Heavyweight (+78 kg)	Maki Tsukada  Japan	Daima Beltrán  Cuba	Tea Donguzashvili  Russia
			Sun Fuming  China

Medal table

1	Japan (JPN)	8	2	0	10
2	China (CHN)	1	1	3	5
3	South Korea (KOR)	1	1	1	3
4	Georgia (GEO)	1	1	0	2
5	Germany (GER)	1	0	3	4
6	Belarus (BLR)	1	0	0	1
	Greece (GRE)	1	0	0	1
8	Russia (RUS)	0	2	3	5
9	Cuba (CUB)	0	1	5	6
10	Netherlands (NED)	0	1	3	4
11	Austria (AUT)	0	1	0	1
	France (FRA)	0	1	0	1
	North Korea (PRK)	0	1	0	1
	Slovakia (SVK)	0	1	0	1
	Ukraine (UKR)	0	1	0	1
16	Brazil (BRA)	0	0	2	2
17	Belgium (BEL)	0	0	1	1
	Bulgaria (BUL)	0	0	1	1
	Estonia (EST)	0	0	1	1
	Israel (ISR)	0	0	1	1
	Italy (ITA)	0	0	1	1
	Mongolia (MGL)	0	0	1	1
	Slovenia (SLO)	0	0	1	1
	United States (USA)	0	0	1	1
Total		14	14	28	56

References

• International Olympic Committee results database
• Videos of the 2004 Judo Summer Olympics