Judo at the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad
Venue	Ano Liossia Olympic Hall
Location	Athens, Greece
Dates	14–20 August 2004
Competition at external databases
Links	IJF • JudoInside
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Judo at the 2004 Summer Olympics
	Men	Women
	60 kg	48 kg
	66 kg	52 kg
	73 kg	57 kg
	81 kg	63 kg
	90 kg	70 kg
	100 kg	78 kg
	+100 kg	+78 kg

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.^[1][2]

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

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

  *   Host nation (Greece)

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Japan	8	2	0	10
2	China	1	1	3	5
3	South Korea	1	1	1	3
4	Georgia	1	1	0	2
5	Germany	1	0	3	4
6	Belarus	1	0	0	1
	Greece*	1	0	0	1
8	Russia	0	2	3	5
9	Cuba	0	1	5	6
10	Netherlands	0	1	3	4
11	Austria	0	1	0	1
	France	0	1	0	1
	North Korea	0	1	0	1
	Slovakia	0	1	0	1
	Ukraine	0	1	0	1
16	Brazil	0	0	2	2
17	Belgium	0	0	1	1
	Bulgaria	0	0	1	1
	Estonia	0	0	1	1
	Israel	0	0	1	1
	Italy	0	0	1	1
	Mongolia	0	0	1	1
	Slovenia	0	0	1	1
	United States	0	0	1	1
Totals (24 entries)		14	14	28	56

Together with 366 directly qualified athletes, there were 18 invitational places, making up a total athlete quota of 386 athletes—229 men, 157 women.

An NOC may enter up to one athlete per weight category. The qualifying places were allocated as follows:^[3][4]

Event/Union		Location	Men	Women	Totals
World Championships		Japan	6	6	84
Unions	African Judo Union	—	3	2	35
	Judo Union of Asia	—	5	3	56
	European Judo Union	—	9	5	98
	Oceania Judo Union	—	1	1	14
	Pan American Judo Union	—	6	3	63
Host Nation (GRE)		—	1	1	14[a]
Tripartite Commission Invitation places		—			15
Final Qualification places		—			7
TOTAL					386

^a If the host nation qualified athletes directly through the world championships or European continental qualification system, the reserved entry places were reallocated as part of the European continental qualification.

Continental qualification places is allocated through the ranking system based on the major tournaments on the continent (continental championships, qualification tournaments). More important tournaments and tournaments closer to the Olympics carried more points.

• judo at the 2004 Summer Olympics at the International Judo Federation
• judo at the 2004 Summer Olympics at JudoInside.com
• Official result book – Judo
• Videos of the 2004 Judo Summer Olympics